It’s been a year filled with remarkable prices for rare US coins, and no single area has seen more of these than higher grade Carson City gold. There’s been the PCGS MS62+ 1884-CC $10 at $132,000 (Stack’s Bowers 8/2021: 4235), the $150,000 PCGS AU58 1870-CC $5 (Stack’s Bowers 8/2021: 4210), and even the $144,000 PCGS MS62 1877-CC $20 (Heritage 11/2021:3706). These are prices that make you go hmmm…But all of these pale in comparison to the PCGS AU53 1870-CC $20 which Heritage just sold for $1,620,000.

cue: sound of author fainting as he types these words

*1870-CC $20.00 PCGS AU53, courtesy of Heritage*

Just a few days before the auction was ready to start, a seasoned CC gold collector emailed me and asked me what I thought the coin would sell for. This is a coin I know intimately, having bought it raw in the early 2000s. It graded AU50 and it became the very first example of this date to grade this high at PCGS. I told the collector I figured it would bring $450,000-550,000; later making a mental note that “on a good day” it might bring as much as $650,000.

What expertise! Off by just a million dollars!

The previous sale of this exact coin was for $411,250 back in March 2014. You would think that a sale which is just seven years old would have had some relevance. In today’s high-end coin market, seven human years appears to be the equivalent of seven dog years. A new generation of very wealthy collectors has arisen, and past prices are meaningless to them as long as a coin is 1) rare and 2) finest known, or at least the highest graded at PCGS.

Beginning with the sale of two not-especially-nice NGC 1870-CC $20s in the Heritage 4/2021 sale for $360,000 (for an EF40) and $384,000 (for an E45), I could tell that the market for this date had made a quick pivot to the “hot” category. Until then, a few marginal quality pieces had appeared for sale or sold privately (I handled three examples between 2017 and 2019), and these all sold at the somewhat depressed levels which had characterized the 1870-CC since the early 2010s.

I watched the sale of this coin on the Heritage Live bidding platform and even in this sanitized environment, the action was really exciting. From around $700,000 on, there were two collectors fighting it out.

I envisioned two very wealthy, very inexperienced collectors determined to own this coin and damn the price.

Let’s call them Bit Coin Bob and Crypto Charlie. Fueled by Dutch Courage, the two Carson City enthusiasts turned the bidding into their own Private Drag Race at 200 miles per hour.

And that’s exactly how you get record prices; the kind of ones which 20 years from now will be met with a gasp and with a new generation of coin collectors wondering just what the heck happened for this coin to bring so much money.

Here and some random thoughts I have about the significance of this sale.

The Rising Tides Lifts All Boats theory says that all 1870-CC double eagles are now worth significantly more on November 12th than they were on November 10th. I would disagree with this. Yes, one of the “five” graded AU50 by PCGS is likely worth more today than it was 48 hours ago, but I can’t see one selling for more than $550,000-650,000. The VF and EF 1870-CC double eagles didn’t gain any value from this sale but as noted above, this date is up around 20-30% overall since Spring 2021.
As with most Runaway Prices at auction, there were just two ultra-determined bidders in on the PCGS AU53 1870-CC. Take one of these bidders out of the picture… and the coin would have brought close to a million dollars less.
I’m surprised that a non-CAC circulated coin did so well. Most of the I Can’t Believe That Coin Sold For So Much results from 2021 have been for CAC-approved Uncirculated coins. Given the fact that CAC is unlikely to ever approve an 1870-CC $20 in AU, a CAC sticker was not as significant as it usually is. However, knowing this implies a degree of sophistication that the two bidders may very well have not had.
The two big winners of this transaction are the underbidder and the consignor. The former will now get to buy the next nice-ish 1870-CC $20 which comes on the market for a million dollars less, while the latter likely made a million dollar profit on a coin which he held for just five or six years.
The mythical NGC AU58 1870-CC which was stolen from a Brink’s truck is now technically a $2 million++ coin. I hope the Moscow Oligarch who owns it reads this blog and decides to reintroduce it to the market sooner than later.

In closing, I’ve got to mention again that there seems to be no area of the dated gold market which is stronger across the board than CC issues. If I had a set, I’d be a seller as these new levels—in some cases—seem unsustainable. If I were just starting out…well, I’d reconsider my branch mint and perhaps trade the two Cs for one C or perhaps an S.

Would you like to cash in on your Carson City gold holdings? Contact me by phone at 214.675.9897 and let’s run a Concierge Sale™ featuring your coins.

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