COSTA MESA, CA.- Silver’s record price of over $60/troy ounce wasn’t the only new record set in the world of coins and precious metals today. A newly discovered specimen of the famous 1804 dollar, “The King of American Coins,” brought $6 million at an auction held this afternoon at Griffin Studios in the Costa Mesa headquarters of Stack’s Bowers Galleries, the country’s leading specialty auction house for rare coins. The legendary rarity was consigned by the heirs of James A. Stack, Sr. (no relation to the Stack family who founded Stack’s Bowers Galleries in 1935), a New York collector who died in 1951.
Despite intense interest in the 1804 dollar among American coin collectors dating back to its first publication in 1842, this specimen had never before been documented or sold publicly. No fewer than three full length books on the 1804 dollar have been published since the 1960s, but this coin’s existence was a shock to the worldwide numismatic community. Until it was consigned to Stack’s Bowers Galleries, no numismatic experts knew of this coin, which was quietly acquired by Mr. Stack sometime in the 1940s and preserved by his heirs ever since.
The price of $6 million, representing a high bid or “hammer price” of $5 million with the industry-standard 20% buyer’s premium, nearly tripled the previous auction record for a Class III 1804 dollar ($2,300,000, set in 2009). 1804 dollars are categorized in three classes, representing so-called “Originals” or Class I coins, the unique Class II “restrike” with plain edge in the Smithsonian Institution, and Class III “restrikes” like this one…