The most important coin I bought a the recent FUN show was a 1907 Wire Edge $10 gold piece. This is the last minor gold type coin that I will be able to buy. The story of this piece, which was the first of the $10 Indian gold pieces, is interesting. About half way through 1907, the St. Gudens studio in Cornish, New Hampshire, produced a pair of plaster models for the $10 Indian gold piece. The Philadelphia Mint produced a set of dies and struck 500 examples of the new design. This initial effort at the design had many problems. First, and foremost coin did not have a rim which would protect the design while it was in circulation. The rim also made it easier to count and stack the coins which was an essential need for gold pieces during this period. Second, the design features were not sharp and well defined. This left the design open to counerfeiting. Finally the fields had many tiny die polish marks which gave the coin a sandy surface as noted above. When viewing this coin in person, it has nice hazy luster. I am still working on that. Finally, the “wire rim” around outside of the coin was a concern. If it were worn or knocked off the coin, the piece would be underweight. This was a huge concern with gold coins during this period. An underweight gold coin would not be honored at its full face value. Despite the issues, the mint issued the coin … to members of the government and favored coin dealers. The mint produced an addition 42 pieces for a total initial mintage of 542. Seventy pieces were ultimately melted, leaving a net mintage of 472. Most of the survivors are Mint State. PCGS graded this piece MS-65.
Yeah, if you want to go much beyond this one, I'm guessing it's less "sell a spare house to free up the cash" and more "auction off a couple of office buildings"...
Indians are really cool picked this one up a couple of years ago and remains one of my favorites in my growing collection.
To continue the story, Charles Barber took the original artwork and added a rim to it. The result was the 1907 $10 Indian with the Rounded Rim and Periods. The periods, also known as "stops," appear before and after "TEN DOLLARS" on the reverse. Here is a picture of that variety, which I have taken from PCGS "CoinFacts." The Philadelphia Mint struck 32,500 of these coins which made it appear that this would be the first made for circulation issue. Alas, it wasn't. The mint melted 32, 450 of them, leaving just 50 survivors. Bowers estimates that no more than 42 of these have survived, and no, I won't be getting one. Why were they melted? I think the answer was that the mint officials were not happy with the sharpness of the coin. They may have thought that it would have been too easy to counterfeit. For those who are into old TV shows, this is the coin that Mr. Wilson bought in the episode, "Dennis and the Rare Coin," from the "Dennis the Mence" sitcom. Mr. Wilson paid $250 for the piece which from my research was low at the time. The 14th edition of The Red Book (1960) priced it at $700. Today it sells for several hundred thousand dollars. As it turned out, the coin Mr. Wilson bought was a counterfeit. The finally issued a 1907 $10 gold pieces toward the end of the year. The story was that Henry Herring, an unsung hero in the St. Gaudens gold design story, and St. Gaudens son, Homer, redid the artwork. The result was the "No Periods, No Motto" type. This coin is fairly common and as collectable as a gold coin can be these days with the high gold spot prices. This one is PCGS MS-64, CAC. Here's a second one I still have. I bought this one many years ago. It's in an NGC MS-61 and is very under graded in my opinion. I have seen these coins under graded because the sharpness issue. Midway through 1908 the motto "In God We Trust" was added. Theodore Roosevelt thought that placing the name of the Deity was blasphemous because money could be used for immoral purposes. Congress overruled him. The strike issues were finally ironed out, and the $10 Indian continued to look like this for the rest of its run. This piece is an NGC MS-66. If it were a PCGS MS-66, it would be worth a lot more.
