We rarely give a second thought to where the money in our pockets or purses comes from. I don’t mean the effort in earning it. Rather, the actual place where it was made and the physical material that comprises it. Why should we? Paper money bills are made from cotton and linen/flax. (Nope, not paper.) When we need more, we grow, harvest and make more.
Modern “clad” coins are struck from a mix of nickel and copper. Plenty of that is mined every year with loads more known to be in the ground....
Time was, people did think about the coins they carried and where they came from. They even looked at some of the small things on them. If the letter “D” was evident, it was probably minted in Denver. “O” stood for the mint in New Orleans. “S” means San Francisco. If there was no letter, it was invariably struck in Philadelphia.
Before our current clad coin composition, silver and gold were sought-after coin metals for which people ventured out west in the mid-1800s to find and mine. Actually, the original “rush” for gold began in 1799 in, of all places, North Carolina. That was when and where a young farmer named Conrad Reed found a 17-Troy-pound “nugget” on his family’s farm in Cabarrus County.
In Colonial money, Reed’s gold nugget (think very big rock) at the then-prevailing value of $20 per ounce, would have been about $4000. At the time, that was an absolute fortune – plenty to buy a nice farm, home and much more. Today, the gold value alone of Reed’s find would be upwards of $700,000. But, wait. It’s historic value plus being such a unique large-size specimen would easily put it in the many millions of dollars range.
After 1800, more gold was found along the eastern seaboard between Alabama and Virginia. It was plentiful enough for the US to establish a mint at Dahlonega, Georgia.
The Dahlonega site was chosen because, near there in the very early 1800s, a deer hunter named Benjamin Parks tripped over a rock in the woods unearthing a gold vein. It wasn’t the “Mother Lode” later to be found out west but was significant. The Dahlonega Mint operated from 1838 to 1861 – shutting down at the outset of the Civil War. An additional mint in Charlotte, North Carolina operated those same years and closed due to the war.
The biggest gold finds would be in California, Nevada and Colorado. That rush began in 1848 near present day Sacramento when a young James Marshall happened to spot gold chunks in the river near Sutter’s Mill. By 1849, tens of thousands were descending on the region hoping to strike it rich. With gold still at $20 per ounce, many prospectors actually did.
So much gold was being extracted out west the large San Francisco Mint was established. From it, countless gold coins in denominations between one dollar and 50 dollars were struck from the gold taken from western streams. Many coins containing that historic gold survive to this day.
Now exceeding $3,400 per ounce, naturally gold coins no longer circulate as our currency. They are held in vaults or private collections. In addition to the intrinsic value of gold, the collectible or “numismatic” value of vintage coins seems to just keep rising.
For instance, a “common” quarter-ounce, five-dollar gold coin struck in huge quantities in Philadelphia or Denver has a current value of roughly $900 in nice condition. However, the collector value of a rarer five-dollar coin from the aforementioned Charlotte or Dahlonega mints can now bring anywhere from $30,000 to $60,000. Similarly, gold coins from the San Francisco Mint were also often struck in smaller quantities. Carrying the “S” mintmark, they are usually worth far more than their Denver or Philadelphia counterparts.
Another major exception would be coins from a mint established in 1870 in Carson City. It was instituted to strike coins from gold and silver extracted from Nevada mines. Quantities of Morgan-type silver dollars with a “CC” designation on them were struck there as were a goodly number of gold coins. “Goodly” but not very many.
Gold coins made in Carson City remain very rare. For instance, unlike the aforementioned $900 value of a five-dollar gold piece from Denver, identically-dated coins made in Carson City can bring upwards of $250,000.
Surely, it’s more than worth the time and money to again think about and take a much closer look at any vintage gold or silver coins that might turn up.
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