United States 1836 5 dollars
This specimen was lot 3804 in Künker sale 406 (Osnabruck, March 2024), where it sold for €1,000 (about US$1,312 including buyer's fees). The catalog description[1] noted,
"VEREINIGTE STAATEN VON AMERIKA. 5 Dollars 1836, Philadelphia. Liberty. Classic head type. 7,52 g Feingold. GOLD. Sehr schön. Erworben von der Fritz Rudolf Künker GmbH & Co. KG. (United States of America, five dollars of 1836, Philadelphia mint, classic head. Very fine.)"
The capped bust five dollars of 1813-34 (Fr-132) contained 0.257 troy oz of gold. The coin contained more than five dollars worth of gold and they were bought up and exported as quickly as speculators could obtain them from the mint. After much wrangling in Congress, an act was passed in 1834 reducing the weight to 0.241 troy oz, which weight the coin maintained until 1929, when production ceased. To mark the 6.5% change, the design was modified, resulting in this "classic head" type of 1834-38.
Recorded mintage: 553,147, fairly common for the type.
Specification: 8.36 g, 0.899 fine gold, 22.5 mm diameter; reeded edge.
Catalog reference: KM 57, Fr-135.
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- Breen, Walter H., Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U. S. and Colonial Coins, New York: Doubleday, 1987.
- Friedberg, Arthur L. and Ira S. Friedberg, Gold Coins of the World, From Ancient Times to the Present, 9th ed., Clifton, NJ: Coin and Currency Institute, 2017.
- Michael, Thomas, and Tracy L. Schmidt, Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1801-1900, 9th ed., Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2019.
- Yeoman, R. S., and Kenneth Bressett (ed.), A Guide Book of United States Coins, 65th Ed., Atlanta, GA: Whitman Publishing, 2011.
- [1]Künker, Fritz Rudolf, Horst-Rudiger Künker, Ulrich Künker and Andreas Kaiser, Katalog 406: Gold Coins | Coins and Medals from the Medieval and Modern Times, a. o. Löwenstein-Wertheim | German Coins after 1871, a. o. Patterns from the Coenen Collection, Osnabrück: Fritz Rudolf Künker GmbH & Co., AG, 2024.
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