What's up with the Gold Dollars?

mrcommem

Since there are almost no registry entrants in gold dollars I didn't think there was any interest in them. I bid on four of them in AU55-58 and got blown away. Over $300 for MS55 coins!! What's going on?

sliderider

Gold dollars are rare in any grade.

Gold Dollar Pop. Report

In most years and grades there isn't much more than a handful. Even the most common years/conditions have only a few hundred to their credit. Registry collectors aren't the only ones who buy them, either. Registry collecting gold is rough. Most of the coins worth registering rarely change hands and sell for a ton when they do. It's not for the feint of heart or light of purse.

Also, you said you were looking to buy in the AU55-58 range. A LOT of people buy coins in this range in hopes of submitting/resubmitting them for a MS grade. Paying $300 for a raw AU58 from a seller whose grading abilities are not well known, can pay big bucks if PCGS slabs it out as a MS62 or 63. The people outbidding you probably saw that they were actually BU coins and not AU like the seller thought.

darktone

Stay away from uncertified $1 gold as there are just too many counterfiets- even the commemoratives. mike

BillJones

It's almost impossible to complete a set of gold dollars unless you have a lot of money, patience and time. There are just too many stoppers. (Coins that are so rare and expensive that most collectors can't touch them.) Just run you finger down the price collums on the Red Book, and you will see what I mean.

There is also the matter of size. I had one customer refuse to buy a high grade Type 2 because the coin is "too small." A lot of collectors think that bigger is better. So the gold dollars, which were among the smallest of all U.S. coins, (the type I had the smallest diameter) don't get a lot of respect or interest from many collectors beyond the required coins for a type set.

I really like gold dollars. At one time in the 1970s I thought about doing a set, but soon saw that I did not have the scratch. Today I'm working on an expanded type set. There are several little-known varieties of the 1849 that are really interesting.