Only 1,830 business strike 1869 eagles were produced, giving this one of the ten lowest mintages in the entire Liberty Head eagle series. There are possibly 60-70 known in all grades with most in the EF40-AU50 range. Properly graded AU55 to AU58 coins are very rare and there are two known in Uncirculated: an NGC MS63 (also graded MS623 by PCGS) and a PCGS MS60 which brought a strong $34,500 in Heritage’s 9/08 sale.

This is the nicest of the few AU58′s which I have seen and it appears to be fresh to the market. It has green-gold centers framed by rich, nicely contrasting reddish-gold rings at the borders. The surfaces are semi-prooflike as on virtually all known examples and they are lightly worn but do shows clusters of marks. The most noticeable of these is located in the right obverse field. Locating an 1869 with natural color is extremely hard to do as nearly all have been dipped and/or processed.

The last auction record for an AU58 1869 eagle was Heritage 1/13: 5904 which brought $11,750. Another NGC AU58 brought $11,500 at two different Heritage sales in 2008 and a third NGC AU58 sold for $12,075 in Superior’s 11/06 sale. The current example, in my opinion, is the nicest of these.

The market for rare date Liberty Head eagles has greatly expanded in the last few years yet, curiously, this very rare issue has stayed fairly flat price-wise. I feel the 1869 is an undervalued coin and it is not likely that more than a few finer exist than this new Condition Census example.