Hello, I was thinking on getting one of these just for the gold. Do you guys think its a good investment to have? Thanks
Those $1 gold coins are very cool. I bought one raw from my local coin dealer for $395 in April (which is a bit dangerous since they are counterfeited). It's much safer to buy one already slabbed by NGC or PCGS. The premium over melt is about 3x to 4x, I believe. They are TINY coins (about 2/3rds the size of a dime). Another possibility to consider is the $2.5 Indian Gold coin. It's pretty cool with the incuse design and you can find these PCGS or NGC graded in AU condition for a smaller premium over melt -- roughly the same price as the $1 gold (around $400 I believe), but you get 2.5 times more gold.
I think there awesome! I got mine raw from my local dealer for $200ish and its in around AU58-MS60! But if I could re-do it I would have bought one in a PCGS slab. I know people say buy the coin not the slab but in this economy I cant afford to buy the coin and find out its fake. :rollling:
Here is a TrueView photo of the 1851 Gold Dollar I bought raw a few months back. I got very lucky with this because when I sent it in to be graded, not only was it not counterfeit (which I was worried about), PCGS slapped an MS64 grade on it -- so I ended up making a quick paper profit of $1000 or so. What helped me was I bought this live and in-person with a coin dealer where I was able to cherry-pick a box of raw $1 gold coins, allowing me to find one that was very clean with great luster. Still, until I sent this in to PCGS, I was worried that I just spent $395 on a counterfeit. This is an actual-scale image of it's size (tiny!). The Type 1 Dollar Gold coins are the smallest U.S coin ever struck for circulation. The Type 2 and Type 3 (Indian Princess Head) Dollar Gold coins are slightly larger.
The three cent silver is also slightly larger (14 mm as compared to 13 mm) but they only weigh half as much.
Good factoid Conder. These tiny coins are really interesting. I like to imagine what it must have felt like to have a pocketful of them.
Some more factoids about the 3-cent silver-- it was the only US regular issue coin that was struck in .750 silver, and it was the lowest denomination coin struck at a branch mint in the 19th century.
How large are the old $1 gold coins in relation to the recently minted american eagle (1/10 oz) $5 gold coins?
Significantly smaller. The older ones contained only a bit less than 1/20 oz of gold, so they were approximately half the weight. You can Google the exact dimensions of each.
