O Mint Double Eagle –Opinions

BloodMan

I recently purchased my first O mint Double Eagle. Images are attached.

Any comments on the grade, strike and overall appearance are appreciated.

tjkillian

Very nice. The only thing that I heard was that the gold for those "O" mint in the early 1850's came from California.
There was a gold rush going on there at that time.

Congratulations!

Tom

rhedden

I love the coin: lower mintage, underappreciated branch mint, older date gold, and free of major hits. That makes it an instant winner in my book. More people should be collecting this stuff instead of buying common date junk in monster grades.

I'd cross it to PCGS, personally, and I think it would cross as EF-40.

Winston

Nice coin. I actually prefer these older Libertry $20s to the Saints. Both are nice and I own both, but I prefer these older Liberty Heads.

291fifth

Nice coin but VF by my standards.

partagas

I agree with 291, I say a VF35. I deduct for weak strike, not that numeric grades matter when purchasing a coin. Even with the weak strike, very eye pleasing coin. I would love to own it.

Coins from New Orleans have a nice history, and I do agree with others. They are vastly underated.

Perhaps the mystique of the once great city is tarnished by the ghetto-trash haven it has sadly become over the last many decades.

PonyExpress8

Thats a nice early "O" mint. Grade appears accurate but as typical of a lot of "O" coins the weak strike on the bottom half of the obverse often gets confused for wear. This is particularly evident in the stars on the left and right where the upper stars have clear detail and the lower ones are lacking. What's really nice is to find better than average struck coins then the issue of wear versus strike is not significant.

New Orleans gold has not enjoyed any sort of dealer following yet in terms of rarity these are coins have good long term potential. They just have never been as sexy as Dahlonegas and Charlottes. Maybe someday that will change.

BloodMan

Thanks for the comments. I agree with all of them.

The strike is weak as clearly seen by the flat stars close to the date and date itself. I think the wear is borderline XF40. I am not sure how much NGC/PCGS subtracts (if any) for a weak strike on an XF Double Eagle. I have seen coins with a slightly better strike, but weaker than usual, with less wear graded VF35, eg, see the 1874-CC below which is in an OGH.