Lot 1377
1849 Norris, Gregg & Norris $5 Gold. Plain edge. NGC graded AU-58. The first of the California private-mint issues, mentioned as early as May 1849 in a newspaper account which noted that a useful five-dollar-gold coin had just been made at Benicia City. Almost immediately, these coins disappeared into history, and the minters' initials which appear on these coins ("N.G. & N." above the date of 1849) were not tied to the folks who created these coins until the next century.
This is a charming example, very lustrous with only the slightest hint of friction. The rims are clean and unharmed and the color is just splendid - a natural rich golden tone, just like a California summer sunset.
Estimated Value $10,000 - 12,000.
In the autumn of 1849, a constitutional convention of withery politicians and wiley businessmen met in the coastal fishing town of Monterey, drafting a set of ideas which would prohibit the detested slavery from occurring in the Territory of California. The resulting document was ratified by a popular vote of citizens in November. These same conventioneers then petitioned Washington for statehood, a dream which came true in the autumn of 1850. The stage was set, for war over slavery and for the wildest expansion in the Union's wealth, as the hills of central California yielded tons of yellow dust and golden nuggets. This charming, historic, and very rare coin was created from some of the first of that native ore that came out of those golden brown hills.
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