1874 G$1 Gold Dollar PCGS MS68 Top Pop Pop 3 and Only 1 Finer (MS68+)

Exquisite Ultra Gem Mint State 1874 Gold Dollar 1874 Gold Dollar. MS-68 (PCGS). Offered is one of the finest, most visually appealing gold dollars of any date certified by PCGS. The surfaces are drenched in beautiful, vivid rose-gold color with tinges of pale powder blue discernible. Both sides display bold to sharp definition that allows full appreciation of this classic gold coin design. This Ultra Gem 1874 gold dollar would serve as a highlight in the finest type or date collection. The suspension of gold specie payments by eastern and midwestern banks early in the Civil War dealt the gold dollar a blow from which it basically never recovered. Mintages had started to diminish as early as 1854, when the return of small denomination silver coins to active circulation rendered the gold dollar increasingly obsolete in circulation in the eastern United States. A delivery of 1,361,355 pieces from the Philadelphia Mint in 1862 proved an aberration. The suspension of specie payments resulted in paltry yearly mintages through the balance of the 1860s and into the early 1870s. Minor upsurges in production were achieved at the Philadelphia Mint in 1873 and 1874 as the destruction of worn gold coins pursuant to the Act of February 12, 1873, provided bullion for new coins. Thereafter yearly mintages remained extremely low until the gold dollar passed into coinage history in 1889. Not even in 1878, when the Mint stepped up gold coin production in anticipation of the resumption of specie payments on January 1, 1879, did gold dollar production increase. Clearly the usefulness of the gold dollar had passed, a situation summed up nicely by Mint Director James Pollock in his Annual Report of 1874: Whenever the specie basis shall have been reached, large coinage of the half and quarter eagles, will be necessary, but the mints can manufacture the same as rapidly as would be required or the bullion could be supplied for the purpose. We now have six different denominations of gold coin, which is a greater variety than is required. This being the case, and the three-dollar gold piece corresponding so nearly, as to weight, value, and size, with the quarter eagle, and rarely used, it should be discontinued. The gold dollar is not a convenient coin, on account of its small size, and it suffers more proportionately from abrasion than larger coins. Its issues should, therefore, be confined to actual demands for it by the depositors of bullion, and the requirements for change and retail transactions should be met with silver coin. The final high mintage issue in the gold dollar series, the 198,800 pieces produced for the 1874 would actually qualify as a low mintage in many other U.S. coin series. Within the context of the type, however, the 1874 is plentiful enough to be popular with collectors seeking a single Mint State coin to represent the Type III design. Many were saved upon release from Treasury Department holding, a task made easier by the lack of demand for the denomination in circulation. On the other hand, this issue remains rare in the finest Mint State grades, as here. Saving coins and saving them with expert numismatic care are two different things, and few 1874 gold dollars extant received the fine treatment accorded this example over the intervening 150 years. PCGS Population: 3; with a single MS-68+ finer.