I get it. Here’s a couple 58s I wish I still had big sellers remorse on all but I needed money and my now ex was bleeding me dry
The mintages you see in references like “The Red Book” are not as carved in stone as you might think. The first mint did not keep records on how many of the 1797 $5 gold pieces had the Small and Large Eagle reverses. They only recorded how many coins they made. They also did not mark down what date was on the coin. If a 1796 die was perfectly good, they didn’t toss it just because the year had changed. They kept on making coins with it in 1797 until it was worn out. Here is an example of what was done for two “Red Book” montage numbers. The the 1796 quarter eagles, the No Stars mintage is reported as 963. That was represented by two deliveries of coins, something like 80 pieces in the first (which are thought to be the rare variety of 1796 No Stars $2.50) and the rest later in the year. The reported montage for the 1796 With Stars quarter eagle is 432. There is no record that the mintage really was that. The assumption comes from a delivery of 432 quarter eagles in January 1797 that researchers think were 1796 dated pieces with the stars on the obverse.
One of the more interesting points of early US Mint history. The US Mint reports a mintage of about 900,000 large cents for 1799. In no place does it mention they were dated 1799, and in reality the vast majority were dated 1798. Most of the Style 2 Hair 1798 large cents were probably struck in 1799-1800, and we really have no way of knowing which shipment had the 1799-dated cents. Likewise the 109k mintage for 1796 Caps and 363k for 1796 Busts, yet the latter is the rarer of the two.
