Among the many highlights of the Stack’s Bowers Official Auctions of the Whitman Baltimore Winter Expo will be found “the rarest of the rare” – the very finest 1858-O, graded MS-63 by NGC.
Q. David Bowers writes:
The 1858-O is a low-mintage issue with just 35,250 coins struck. The vast majority of examples were consumed by commercial use, and most numismatic scholars accept an estimate of only 150 to 200 pieces extant in all grades. The typical survivor grades EF or AU and is likely to trace its provenance to a group of circulated examples that entered numismatic channels during the 1990s. Mint State coins are exceedingly rare, with Doug Winter (Gold Coins of the New Orleans Mint: 1839-1909, 2006 edition) accounting for just six or seven examples at any Mint State level. Four of the Uncirculated survivors are from the treasure recovered from the SS Republic shipwreck. The present example is the finest of that quartet and also the finest certified 1858-O double eagle from any source. A true “wonder coin” among New Orleans Mint twenties, this would serve as a focal point in any specialized gold collection.