1849 $5 Norris, Gregg & Norris Plain Edge MS(PCGS#10279)

Summer 2025 Global Showcase Auction U.S. Coins

拍卖行

Stack's Bowers

批号

3488

等级

VF30

价格

162,808

详细说明

This premium mid-grade example offer uncommonly rich and remarkably original surfaces in a privately minted coin from Gold Rush California, irrespective of issuer or type. Both sides exhibit deep honey-gold color with direct lighting calling forth exceptionally vivid overtones of reddish-rose and powder blue. Moderate wear explains the assigned grade, but it is evenly distributed on surfaces that are well centered in strike and which retain bold detail to the major design elements. Numerous marks are noted, especially in the fields, although all are commensurate with the grade, and none are singularly conspicuous during in hand viewing.<p>Widely believed to be the first of the California private mints, partners Thomas H. Norris, Hiram A. Norris, and Charles Gregg established their firm in Benicia City sometime in early 1849. The May 31, 1849 edition of the <em>Daily Alta California</em> noted a new $5 coin that "in general appearance...resembles the United States coin of the same value, but it bears the private stamp of 'Norris, Greig [sic] & Norris', and is in other particulars widely different." Actually looking nothing like their federal counterparts, the reverse of the Norris, Gregg & Norris $5 piece is almost purely inscriptional aside from a ring of stars, while the obverse has an eagle with drooping wings completely unlike that of Gobrecht's Liberty Head half eagle. Even so, there is little indication that the coins were anything other than readily accepted in commerce and an assay by Jacob R. Eckfeldt and William E. DuBois substantiated their purity. Later in 1850, Norris, Gregg & Norris relocated their business to Stockton and struck 1850-dated $5 coins marked STOCKTON known only from a unique specimen permanently impounded in the Smithsonian collection. The address at this location was "the half of lot 15 Block 1 East of Center St. Stockton," as described in Hiram A. Norris' will drawn up on November 2, 1850. The firm was still in possession of this property when he passed away in 1853, although references to their coins in local papers had ceased by 1851.<p>Despite what seems to have been a limited emission of coins, four varieties of the 1849 $5 are known with plain and reeded edges, as well as with or without a period after the word ALLOY. Large numbers of these coins ended up in the San Francisco Mint's crucibles along with most other privately issued coins, making every survivor from this period significant in their own right.