1860 $5 Clark, Gruber & Co. Five Dollar MS65 PCGS. K-2, R.4....

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1860 Clark, Gruber & Co. Five Dollar, K-2, MS65
Provenance Dating to 1911, Ex: James A. Stack
Tied With One Other for Finest Certified

1860 $5 Clark, Gruber & Co. Five Dollar MS65 PCGS. K-2, R.4. Sole dies for the issue. The old green label holder lists the PCGS number as 10138, the value now assigned to the Clark, Gruber & Co. twenty dollar; our listed PCGS number of 10136 is correct.

This example's most recent auction appearance was in the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection, offered by Stack's on 16 January 1990. Plate-matching is remarkably simple, owing to a tiny copper dot to the left of Liberty's lips, a teardrop-shaped flaw between stars 3 and 4, and a depression at the back of Liberty's shoulder. Less visible, even in the Stack's color plate, are the numerous faint die cracks through the obverse margins, a sign of die stress, and the yellow-gold surfaces' subtle green highlights.

The Stack's description is remarkably brief for such an important piece of Territorial gold. Between the opening recapitulation of the coin's design and the concluding notes on color plate and pedigree (Lyman Low, 28 January 1911, which gives this representative a provenance more than a century long), here it is in full:

"Gem Brilliant Uncirculated, full blazing mint lustre. The coin is 'as struck' and exactly as it left the mint 130 years ago. It is so beautiful that it really defies description. Therefore, nothing more need be said about this coin."

With all due respect to the Stack's cataloger, there is plenty more to be said about this piece, particularly with regard to its background. The private mint of Clark, Gruber & Co. had its origins in a grocery business operated by brothers Austin and Milton Clark, who built wealth by selling supplies to miners in search of Western gold. They went into the banking business with Emmanuel Gruber, forming Clark, Gruber & Co., and in response to the inconvenience of handling large quantities of gold dust, they formed a private mint to make it into locally useful coinage.

Over two years, 1860 and 1861, Clark, Gruber & Co. struck gold coins from quarter eagles to double eagles. The quarter and half eagles were federal-imitative issues that substituted firm name CLARK & CO. for LIBERTY on her coronet and PIKES PEAK GOLD DENVER for UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. The firm faced a significant "learning curve" with its initial issues and the coins dated 1861 generally have far better strikes than their 1860 counterparts. Their assays, however, were scrupulous, and their coins widely used and adjudged fair. The reputation of Clark, Gruber & Co. led the federal government to acquire their assaying and coining operations for the U.S. Assay Office at Denver, which evolved after several decades into the Denver Mint that operates today.

Unlike many of the California private gold issues which are next-to-impossible to find in Mint State, a sizable handful of never-worn Clark, Gruber & Co. 1860 five dollar pieces have survived to the present. Most of those coins, however, rate in the lower reaches of Mint State. The finest two examples in the combined certified population are a pair graded MS65 by PCGS. This coin naturally accounts for one. As for the other, in January 2006 Heritage offered an example graded MS65 by NGC as part of The Great Western Collection of Territorial Gold, Part Two, which sold for $92,000. Because NGC no longer recognizes an MS65 representative of the issue, the most logical conclusion is that the MS65 NGC coin was crossed over to PCGS and the NGC insert returned to that firm for deletion.

In any event, this is easily the most important offering of an 1860 Clark, Gruber & Co. five dollar piece in almost a decade. The previous auction record for this issue, set at $92,000 back in 2006, is certain to fall. All that remains to be determined is by how much. Listed on page 394 of the 2014 Guide Book.
Ex: Lyman Low's 156th Sale (1/1911), lot 263; The James A. Stack, Sr. Collection (Stack's, 1/1990), lot 337.
From The Klamath Mountain Collection, Part II.

Coin Index Numbers: (NGC ID# ANJZ, PCGS# 10136, Greysheet# 11742)

View all of [The Klamath Mountain Collection, Part II ]

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