1852 1852/1 Humbert Gold Double Eagle

Coin Details

Auction Record

Description

This is the 1852 Humbert twenty-dollar gold piece with the date cut over 1851. An act of September 30, 1850 let the Treasury contract with an established California assayer to cast gold into ingots bearing the stamp of a United States Assayer. Moffat & Co. took the contract, Augustus Humbert, a New York watchcase maker, was appointed assayer, and the first octagonal fifty-dollar pieces appeared about January 31, 1851. They show an eagle on a rock with the fineness (880 or 887 THOUS.), UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the value, and an engine-turned reverse. The office was an assay office, not a branch of the Mint; the Treasury accepted its pieces for public dues until Congress stopped that in 1852. Adams calls it the first twenty-dollar piece of the Assay Office. Dies dated 1851 were made for ten- and twenty-dollar pieces before the Treasury allowed them; when permission came on February 11, 1852, a 2 was cut over the 1. The eagle carries 884 THOUS. and the reverse a tablet reading AUGUSTUS HUMBERT UNITED STATES ASSAYER OF GOLD CALIFORNIA 1852. Catalogue number: K-9. PCGS number 10193.

Cross References

K-9