Lot 2230
1873-CC. NGC graded AU-55. Attractive original toning. An splendid original coin. And a marvel of well struck workmanship exhibiting lustrous frosty mint surfaces with occasional light wear on it from the short time in circulation. Only 22,410 were struck. To put this coin in its proper perspective, it is a boldly struck example of the early and rare Carson City Mint issue of 1873, a coin that exhibits original patina and has rolling original surfaces from edge to edge. The few blemishes are limited to scattered marks, none unnerving. $20 gold pieces weren't collected by numismatists in those days. Instead, they were used in bullion transactions between banks and exporters/importers, also for payment of goods and services rendered or due. For some inexplicable reason, this attractive coin survived in About Uncirculated condition, choice and uncleaned. How and why are best left to those who can read Tea Leaves.
Everybody with a numismatic background knows how difficult this date is to obtain. 1873-CC is a very rare year for any coin denomination from Carson City. Collectors universally avow its importance. But what do we know about the year itself? Without some historical point of reference, what is this, after all, but simply another rare coin?
Yet the '73-CC is a lot more than that. In 1873, President Ulysses S. Grant was in his final term as President, a hard Panic in the summer and fall of 1873 upset the applecart. The 1870s were a decade of rogues called Carpetbaggers. Railroad tycoons were picking the pockets of the unsuspecting taxpayers. President Grant probably had the cancer which would end his life in 1885 -- one of the ravages of the war he had helped the Union to win. For numismatists today, of course, this important year signaled the passage of the Coinage Act of 1873, in which hard-money gold currency advocates convinced the Congress to demonetize silver. Out West, which concerns us most here, new railroads were snaking across the landscape. The year before (1872) a deadly plague had attacked horses, killing or sickening millions of them (the now-forgotten Great Epizootic of 1872). The invention of barbed wire was still a year off (1874) while the Indian Wars occupied the energies of William Tecumseh Sherman, late of the U.S. Army, an Indian hater to the last drop, who would soon engender blowback on the Army in the personage of a remarkable Native American commander calling himself Crazy Horse (1876). Verily, 1873 was a busy year! To paraphrase a line from Indiana Jones: this 1873-CC double eagle isn't just passing through history, it IS history! Pop 78; 109 finer (PCGS # 8968) .
Estimated Value $14,000 - 15,000.
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