1855 California Gold $50 - 1855' $50 Kellogg, Comm Restrike S.S. Central America

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Description

This is a commemorative restrike of the Kellogg & Co. fifty-dollar piece, dated 1855 but struck in 2001. When the U.S. Assay Office closed on December 14, 1853, its cashier John Glover Kellogg and assayer G. F. Richter opened their own office at 106 Montgomery Street. San Francisco bankers asked them in January 1854 to coin, and their first twenty-dollar pieces came out on February 9, 1854, a close copy of the federal double eagle with KELLOGG & CO. on the coronet. Late in 1854 Augustus Humbert took Richter's place in the firm, which coined heavily into 1855 and then stopped. In August 2001 the California Gold Marketing Group and the California Historical Society struck commemorative pieces in the Kellogg design at the Presidio in San Francisco, in gold recovered from the wreck of the S.S. Central America, using transfer dies the Gallery Mint made from the original Kellogg dies. The ribbon, blank on the 1855 coin, reads S.S. CENTRAL AMERICA GOLD / C.H.S., each piece carries a punched striking date, and the issue was limited to 5,000 (ANA). PCGS number 10235.