Quarterly Review: Gains in Proof 3-Cent Silver & Dated Double Eagles

by John Feigenbaum, Publisher

This edition of the Quarterly III publication is one of our last productions for the calendar year of 2015. Ever since I took over as publisher of CDN in August of this year, Patrick Ian Perez (editor) and I have spent countless hours working through the various publications and taking our time to focus on specific series to bring their prices up to date. We are also working on the layout of the publications to make them more readable.

In this December edition of the Quarterly III, we have honed in on the proof 3-cent silver and double eagle series. Both series were in sore need of review and interestingly, both series have generally seen nice gains since their last thorough examination.

In the September 2015 Quarterly we first took a good look at the type 1 Liberty twenties. We were surprised to see price gains for many of these issues since then. Taking a hard look at type 2 and type 3 Liberty twenties shows market gainers overall, especially for better dates, with an emphasis on Carson City issues and the low-mintage P-mints. All of us who follow this series are aware that CC double eagles seem to gain in value year over year, however we have noted that the 1870-CC seems to have topped off a bit and settled on this month\’s sheet.

Some of our favorite “sleepers” in this series include the very low mintage type 3 issues, including the 1881, 1882, 1885, 1886 and 1891. The presence of these coins has largely been exempt from the European hoards and precious few survive in any grade. Likewise, we feel that the 1902 and 1905 Philadelphia issues are among the most overlooked in the entire series. Many other late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century issues are surprisingly scarce in top grades, but the market is currently not enthusiastic. If you are a contrarian collector, perhaps there is value for you here. In the next edition of Quarterly III (March 2016) we will complete the pricing reviews for half eagles and eagles. There should be some exciting data to review at this time thanks to Heritage FUN Show and Stack\’s-Bowers sale of the Pogue Collections. Until then, we look forward to your feedback. You can reach us at editor@greysheet.com. We look forward to hearing from you. In the meantime, we wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!