| Description: |
Deep and lustrous orange-gold with intense cartwheel lustre on satiny, faintly mattelike
surfaces. A beautiful coin for the grade, easily among the finest known examples of the
issue; PCGS has not certified a finer example than the present coin, and they have
certified only eight specimens in all Mint State grades.PCGS Population: 2; none
finer.Maker: M. Deriberpie, 1852-54.Obverse: Federal style head of Liberty to left, eight
six-pointed stars around, one point of star punch broken and blunt, star one practically
touches tip of Liberty’s bust, tip coronet points to star four, star six nearly touches
upper hair bun. Reverse: A six-pointed star with a broken, blunt tip appears before
CALIFORNIA GOLD, another star after GOLD, DERI below inner beaded circle, 1 DOLLAR and
date on three lines within circle, left foot of 1 in denomination broken, DOLLAR nicely
formed and fairly evenly spaced, outer curve of D thin and tenuous, right foot of R
broken, date numeral widely spaced, 85 widest, 3 malformed at base where it nearly touches
the beaded circle.Edge: Crudely reeded. Die State I: Perfect dies. In The American
Numismatical Manual, by Montroville Wilson Dickeson M.D., (Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott
& Co., 1859) this type was listed among "California Coins.” Interestingly
enough, the date is given correctly in the text as 1853, though the artist drew the date
as 1857 on the plate coin, mistaking the flat-topped 3 for a 7. According to Bob Leonard,
the error was not corrected in the second edition of 1860 or even in the third edition,
dated 1865. |
