It isn't the most eye-appealing specimen, nor did I pay all that much for it for obvious reasons. Reverse: Obverse: Mintmark Closeup:
I don't see it that way. At the time these were just circulating coins. The face value of these coins was a lot of money back then and few could afford to save them just because they had a special mintmark. If anything, we are lucky that these coins are still with us to be enjoyed by collectors today. Only 6360 of the gold dollar were minted, and with only 125-175 known today, this one was luckier than most of its kind.
Collectors only looked at dates until the mid 1890s. There was an article by a man named Heath who got the mint mark thing started then. If you were collecting only by date, the Charlotte and Dahlonega coins were often less well made then their Philadelphia counterparts, which made them less desirable. But yes, the high value thing also discouraged the collection of those coins. It's why very few high grade $20 gold pieces come from anywhere other than coins recovered from shipwrecks.
