Gold Dollar/Population Question

ms71

Here's one that has perplexed me for awhile - the relative scarcity of the 1849 (Phila) gold dollars with "open" and "closed" wreath reverses. Everything outside the Pop reports points to the open wreath being scarcer. Greysheet is higher on the open wreath. David Akers' book (Auction Records Vol. I), long seen as a standard reference, cites the closed wreath as "the most common variety of 1849 gold dollar". Everythingyou read seems to agree with this assessment, until you look at the Pop. reports. The PCGS report shows "total graded" for the 1849 open wreath of 898 pieces. For the 1849 closed wreath, the "total graded" is just 79 pieces. What gives? The pop of 79 qualifies the closed wreath as a pretty scarce coin (by comparison, the 1875 gold dollar, widely seen as "very rare" has a total PCGS Pop of 55). The pop of almost 900 for the open wreath makes it much less scarce. Is all the perceived scarcity of the open wreath due to its status as a "type" coin? How could the market and Akers' comments be so out of whack with the Pop report? I mean, you could maybe swallow nearly equal Pops, but a ration of greater than 10 to 1, with the "common" coin on the low side of the ratio?

The only rationale I can come up with for the high Pop of open wreath coins is the accepted notion that "first of type" strikes are often widely saved. Normally this translates to "first year" strikes, but with the Type I gold dollar the first-year production can be further segmented into "open wreaths" which were struck first and "closed wreaths" which came later after the slight design change. All Type I gold dollars struck after 1849 were, of course, of the closed wreath design. Any thoughts on why the closed wreath 1849 is widely seen as "common" ?

darktone

ms71, that is pretty odd? Do you think the pop reports may have made a mistake and have these two coins reversed? I'll take a look at the NGC pop reports. mike

darktone

ms71, the NGC pop report backs up your finding with the PCGS pop reports. 1849 open wreath=187 coins and the 1849 closed=80 coins. mike

njcoincrank

I am not sure, this is only a quess, but I may have a reason.

When PCGS and NGC first started out they may not have labled the so-called more common variety as such. Example: 1907 $20 High Reliefs were not always labled "flat edge" and "wire edgs", hence the vast majority of the common variety could have been slabbed earlier on and then dropped from the pop reports when they started labeling them "flat edge" and "wire edge".

Perhaps an earl edition of the PCGS and/or NGC pop report will show only one listing for the 1849 gold dollar, not two as they currently do.

Once again, this is only a guess.

njcoincrank