One of only 15-known examples of this 1804 Draped Bust silver dollar sold for $3,360,000 on Dec. 17, top bidding at Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ offering of Section II of the Larry H. Miller set in Newport Beach, California. Bidding opened at $2.6 million, followed closely by a bid of $2.7, using a telephone bid of $2.8 million shooting the prize. A 20 percent buyer’s premium is added to bid to the cost realized.
Graded Proof 65 by Professional Coin Grading Service, it’s among the finest-known of the”King of American Coins: and signifies the Class I kind, struck around 1834, compared to Class II and III illustrations that were struck a few decades later to meet collector interest. Called the Stickney Specimen after its first known proprietor Matthew A. Stickney of Salem, Massachusetts, it spent a lot of the 20th century in the collection of the Eliasberg family, selling at Bowers and Merena’s 1997 auction of choices from the Louis E. Eliasberg Sr.. Collection for $1,815 million. A comparably rated example Called the Deter Specimen failed to market at Legend Rare Coin Auctions’ sale of their Bruce Morelan collection in October on an estimate of $4,000,000 to $4,400,000 after realizing $3.29 million in a Stack’s Bowers and Sotheby’s D. Brent Pogue market in 2017.
Another magnificent coin with an Eliasberg pedigree provided was an 1894-S Barber dime graded Proof 65 by Numismatic Guaranty Corp. using a green Certified Acceptance Corp. sticker. It is nearly equal in fame to the 1804 dollar, with a mintage of just 24 coins, of which nine are confirmed today. They have been produced at the San Francisco Mint to coin staying silver from melted coins of older designs.
The cataloger adds the 24 1894-S Barber dimes were struck on June 9, 1894, with three moving to assay and others”unceremoniously put to a bag of sooner dated dimes and introduced into circulation,” with the diminutive mintage listed. It has been considered a Branch Mint Proof problem, despite little evidence that illustrations were struck from glistening expires on polished planchets, and this is the third-finest-known, characterized by a lint mark at the obverse field between Liberty’s chin and neck. It last appeared at auction in Stack’s 65th Anniversary Sale in October 2000 where it sold for $431,250.
On Dec. 17 it attained $1,440,000.
