1909-D $20 MS67 PCGS....

Description

The Eliasberg-Duckor-Morse 1909-D Twenty, MS67
Tied for Finest Known
Large D Over Small D Variety

1909-D $20 MS67 PCGS. Ex: Eliasberg/Duckor. The 1909-D double eagle, with a scant mintage of 52,500 pieces, is considered scarce through the MS64 grade level, and becomes quite rare in higher grades. In Superb Gem, the grade of the specimen offered in this lot, the 1909-D is virtually unobtainable. PCGS has graded only two coins MS67, and NGC has seen one such example. Neither service has certified coins of this date any finer (12/07).
The present 1909-D MS67 double eagle displays the usual sharp strike typically found on this issue. Even the often-weak Capitol dome and olive branch show nice definition, as do the eagle's feathers. Each side is awash in variegated peach-gold and mint-green patina and radiant luster. Impeccably preserved surfaces display just a few trivial marks, of which those in the upper left (facing) obverse field and on Liberty's left breast may serve as pedigree markers. The nest of curly lines to the right of the mintmark, and what appear to be faint traces of a small D beneath the large, wide D mintmark, lead us to believe that this coin is the Large D over Small D variant discovered by Q. David Bowers in the Norweb III sale (Bowers and Merena, 3/1988, lot 4093).
In cataloging that sale, Bowers wrote of the variety:

"Under magnification, to the right of the mintmark is seen a veritable 'bird's nest' of curly lines, raised lines in the coin, indicating that these lines were in the die--a quite fascinating situation. We believe the story is as follows:
"Under stereo magnification, there appears a tiny 'D' mintmark under the regular-sized letter. We suspect that this tiny D was punched by error, this mistake was noted, and an effort was made to grind away the surface so as to efface the error. Some of these grinding marks are what remain today as curlicues. Then the regular-sized D mintmark was overpunched.
"Whether this is the variety which Walter Breen in his Encyclopedia describes as follows: 'Sometimes with minor repunching on D'--or whether this represents the first description of a new variety remains to be seen. At the very least the coin can be accurately described as 'large D over small D,' and as such, this represents its initial publication."

Of course, in the final analysis many collectors will not care so much about the new and novel overmintmark variety this coin represents as the fact that it is an overwhelmingly rare and gorgeous example of the lowest-mintage D-mint Saint-Gaudens. Even seasoned numismatists on the Heritage staff had to fish around when quizzed about the above trivia question, indicating a lack of awareness that the 1909-D has a mintage on the same order of magnitude as the 1908-S and 1913-S Saints, both well-known for their low mintages. In point of fact, before the 1980s the 1909-D was considered rarer than the High Relief, the 1908-S, or 1913-S--then a hoard of several hundred pieces was discovered in Central America and disseminated into the marketplace by the New York firm Manfra, Tordella, and Brooks.
Most of those pieces were obviously in the lower Mint State grades, where several hundred coins are certified at NGC and PCGS together. In MS65 and finer the population drops precipitously, and in MS67 this piece is tied with one other as the finest known--fittingly so, for a coin pedigreed all the way back to Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr., the King of American Numismatics, and from there to the fabulous collections of Dr. Steven L. Duckor and Phillip H. Morse.
Ex: Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. (The United States Gold Coin Collection, Bowers and Ruddy Galleries, 10/1982, lot 1032); Dr. Steven L. Duckor; The Phillip H. Morse Collection of Saint-Gaudens Coinage (Heritage, 11/2005, lot 6569).
From The Jacob Collection of Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles.(Registry values: N1)

Coin Index Numbers: (NGC ID# 26FD, PCGS# 9152, Greysheet# 10163)

Weight: 33.44 grams

Metal: 90% Gold, 10% Copper

Note for clients in the European Union: This lot is considered by the European Union to be “investment gold”. We believe that it meets the criteria established in Article 344(1), point (2) of Council Directive 2006/112/EC and thus should be exempt from import VAT regardless of the selling price. Any questions or concerns about VAT should be addressed to your accountant or local tax authority.

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