1848 $2.50 CAL. MS(PCGS#7749)

The June 2011 Baltimore Auction

拍卖行

Stack's Bowers

批号

9248

等级

AU50

价格

283,134

详细说明

1848 Liberty Quarter Eagle. CAL. AU-50 (PCGS). OGH. 1881 Liberty Quarter Eagle. Proof-58 (NGC). One of the great stories of American history involves how immigrants came to these shores, some to seek their fortunes, others to find religious freedom. California in 1848 was a far flung distance from the more settled east, and only serious adventurers bothered to make such a long seaward journey, and overland was simply too dangerous for all but the most determined souls. All that changed in 1848. John Marshall noticed a reflective lump on the property of Sutter's Mill, recognizing it as gold he immediately set forth to find more. Word got out, with people shouting in the streets of San Francisco "Gold!" by March of that year, spreading to East Coast newspapers by late summer. Thus the focus of fortune hunters of the world became the gold fields of California and no one could get there soon enough. In the initial months of the Gold Rush, many became wealthy, as a lot of the gold has washed down from upstream and was relatively easy to find. Lieutenant Lucien Loeser of Army was charged with delivering some of the initial gold to the Treasury in the East, and safely delivered 230 ounces of freshly discovered gold, some of which was made into military award medals, but much went into these historic quarter eagles. Each was stamped "CAL" on the reverse above the eagle while the coin rested on the obverse die so as not to distend the obverse, and the total issue ran to 1,389 pieces. Many were saved in high grades, like this example, but of course the vast majority were long ago lost. Perhaps 125-175 exist today. The amount of gold found in that region turned out to be quite immense, it took a generation to recover most of it before the fields played out, and the miners drifted back to other forms of fortune finding, many no doubt in the Carson City area when the silver mines were discovered there.