COSTA MESA, CA.- In January 1986, a brand-new Cadillac El Dorado cost $24,251, or $1150 more than coin collector Bernard Richards paid for an 1870-CC $20 gold coin in a Stack’s Rare Coins auction that month.
Today, successor firm Stack’s Bowers Galleries sold the same coin for $1,440,000, for a robust annualized return on investment of 11.49%. The Cadillac coupe is worth about $3,600 today.
The 1870-CC $20 gold coin or “double eagle” is one of the marquee rarities among United States gold coins. The double eagle denomination traces its lineage directly to the discovery of gold in California in 1848, an event that forever altered the trajectory of American history. While the Founding Fathers envisioned no coin larger than a $10 gold coin called an eagle, the discovery of massive gold deposits in California inspired the United States Congress to authorize the production of a gold coin that was twice as big a vehicle to turn California’s golden riches into spendable and countable money. The denomination was authorized in 1849 and first struck for circulation in 1850.
In 1870, a branch mint was established in Carson City, Nevada to answer a similar need to convert metallic riches into coins: the discovery of Nevada’s famed Comstock Lode, the largest deposit of silver in North America. While the mint in the capital of the new state of Nevada was built to strike primarily silver coins, enough gold was discovered in smaller deposits in places like Nevada, Montana, and Utah to necessitate local production of gold coins like double eagles as well. The year the mint opened, only 3,789 double eagles were struck, each bearing a tiny CC mark on the reverse to represent their mint of origin.
Today, only a few dozen coins from that issue survive, likely numbering between 40 and 50. Most have seen hard usage in commerce in the Old West that have left them worn, nicked, or damaged. The Bernard Richards specimen is generally acclaimed as the finest extant survivor, meriting it a grade of About Uncirculated-55 on the arcane 70-point scale used to grade rare coins. The grade was assigned by Professional Coin Grading Service, a third party certification and authentication company based in Newport Beach, California.
Mr. Richards, a construction company executive from Brooklyn, formed a collection of rare gold coins in the 1970s and 1980s as a hobby, one of many he pursued ranging from stamps to tennis to playing the harmonica. His heirs had little idea their father’s weekend avocation had represented an investment beyond their wildest dreams. At press time, 48 of the 173 double eagles Richards collected have been sold for a grand total of $3,733,080: a fine payday for a hobby Richards enjoyed immensely.
