Another thread prompted this question. The 1882 3 dollar gold coin. ONLY 1,500 minted. The last 3 I saw on eBay sold for $1400. Maybe it's just me, but that's a pretty darn low mintage. Why aren't these worth more?
I would rather spend $1500 on a coin with a mintage of 1,500 then $5000 on a coin with a mintage of 150,000
coleguy's statement is true in the broad sense, however, your thread title question was whether this coin is a sleeper? That depends. If you could determine how many of the original existed, that would be very key to a proper determination of whether this coin is a sleeper or not. If original mintage is all to go on, check prices of the other coins in the series. The surrounding dates have mintages of 500-1,000. By comparison, not counting the later years, this particular date has a high mintage. Summarily, it is tough to go wrong with an old 1,500 mintage coin. Also, these were not very popular and not used much. Therefore, finding a nice example should not be difficult.
A quick search at Heritage showed 149 examples of the 1882 $3 have sold for between $1,600 to $16,000. The grade & authenticity is obviously affects the hammer price. I would recommend only buying this coin if it is slabbed by one of the top 3 TPGs.
Demand is key. What if there were no buyers for the $1500 coin, but people were in a bidding war over your $5000 coin and you could double your money? TC
I'm about as far from a coin expert as it gets but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Just kidding--however, I did just get through reading a thread about 4 below yours where it is discussed that the 1882 is one of the most commonly counterfeited $3 gold pieces. I would be leery if it isn't graded. DYODD http://www.cointalk.com/t216050/
