The unique 1873 CC Seated Liberty dime was auctioned off last night for 1.8 million dollars. I found it interesting that live auction bids doubled the high bid of the pre-auction online bids. http://articles.philly.com/2012-08-09/news/33119302_1_dime-pocket-change-online-bids
I was discussing what this coin might bring with some other numismatic experts and I said it could bring as high as ten million dollars, although only if two people with sufficiently deep pockets wanted it badly enough. Given its storied past -- it was the last coin that the "King of Collectors" Louis E. Eliasberg, Jr., obtained for his Complete Collection of U.S. Coins, paying $4,000 for it in November 1950 to dealer James Kelly, who had obtained it out of the Adolphe Menjou Collection a few months earlier for $3,650 -- it was in the realm of possibility, if an outside chance. Yet it is a dime, it brought a lot less than if it were a unique silver dollar, for example. This celebrated and unique dime is thought to have been among several crates full of hundreds of pattern coins and other rarities that William H. Woodin received from the Mint in exchange for two golf half union (fifty dollar) coins that he purchased in 1909. Best Regards, George
Thanks TexasJarhead. My pleasure, this has always been one of my favorite coins even if I'll never own it (I was the high bidder for about 14 seconds after the S-B auction went live). Here's some more recent history. At the May 1996 Bowers and Merena sale of the Eliasberg Collection the coin fetched $550,000; in Heritage's April 1999 sale of the Waldo Bolen Collection of 1873-CC Coinage, the piece went for $632,500; later it sold in Bowers and Merena's August 2004 sale for $891,250.
More likely it was saved from the annual Trial of the Pyx assay or an officer at the Carson City Mint. The coin isn't a pattern and the only reason it would have been sent to the Philadelphia Mint would have been as one of the annual assay pieces. It's pedigree seems to track back through several hands before it got to Woodin.
You are correct, the 1873-CC dime was not part of that collection, but many die trial pieces were included. It was not only true patterns.
