CHURCH DONATION: 1866 DOUBLE EAGLE WITH MOTTO

It's one thing to pass the collection plate for a few coins from parishioners.

It's another when a single donated coin can help build a church.

In February, Ben Lamb, pastor at GracePoint, approached his congregation during two services about a funding issue.

The mobile church, which has been setting up shop each week at Washington Township Elementary School, was in the midst of raising funds for a massive building project to turn a former furniture store off of U.S. 30 in Valparaiso into a permanent home.

Church officials needed to provide $300,000 to their lender before the bank would release the funds for the project. The money was due in a matter of days and the church didn't have it. The coin helped pave the way.

"Our people have been resilient, giving money and pledging, but we were down to this $300,000 gap and for us, that's a lot of money," Lamb said, adding he was ready to give the members their money back.

After the first service, a man donated $150,000, he said. But what happened after the second service changed the course of the future building project.

A woman who'd been coming to the church for less than a year approached Lamb and said she was willing to offer a gold coin as a guarantor for the lender. If the church raised the money, the coin would be returned to her.

The next day, Lamb met the woman, who asked him to protect her identity, and told him she wasn't comfortable being a guarantor. She told him God had been good to her and she had to give the coin to the church outright. She estimated its worth at $300,000.

The 1866 Double Eagle gold coin was stamped with "In God We Trust," and coin experts said it was the first year the motto appeared on $20 coins. It was a proof coin, meant for collectors and not commerce, though many may have been spent or melted down over the years. Of the original 30 coins in the batch, experts said that maybe half of those are still in existence.

The woman told Lamb her late husband was a coin collector and the coin was the first one he found.

"It's just weird because I began to not trust" as the church neared its deadline without the money it needed, Lamb said, "and this is the first $20 gold piece stamped with 'In God We Trust.'"

The church was founded in 2009 with 24 members, Lamb said, and now has around 750 congregants. Without a permanent home, the church meets each Sunday at the elementary school, arriving with a trailer full of sound and other equipment that has to be set up and torn down every week.

"It's been hard. We definitely believe attendance will explode once we have a permanent location," he said.

Once Lamb had the donated coin in hand, he started researching its history and auction houses that could sell the coin. He found Heritage Auctions, which was willing to cut its fees for the church.

Lamb, accompanied by the woman who was donating the coin and some staff members, drove to Chicago to meet with officials from Heritage Auctions to turn over the coin, an experience he described as "so nerve wracking."

In a gesture of faith in the coin's worth, Heritage wired the church $150,000 toward what the church owed its lender. That, along with the member's donation, meant the bank would release the funds for the project.

"We are elated and we can't wait to help the church this way," said Sarah Miller, director of numismatics for Heritage Auctions' New York Office.

Heritage Auctions plans to sell the coin April 27 during a premium auction at a convention center in Schaumburg, Ill. Bids are being taken online now; by Friday morning, $140,000 had been bid for the coin and Miller said the final online amount will be the starting point for the live auction.

"Not only are there so few (of the coins) but this one is in wonderful condition. The condition and the rarity really make this coin a specialty," she said. "Even though these coins were never made to be spent, in times of hardship they were, because $20 was a lot of money at the time."

To read the complete article, see:
Donated gold coin brings trust to church project (www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-valparaiso-church-gold-coin-st-0416-20170414-story.html)

1866 Liberty Double Eagle, PR65 Cameo
Outstanding Quality and Eye Appeal, Gold CAC
Only 10 Examples Traced

1866 $20 With Motto, PR65 Cameo NGC. Gold CAC. According to Mint records, only 30 proof Liberty double eagles were struck in 1866. Twenty five examples were delivered for inclusion in the proof sets on January 15, 1866, and five more were delivered on June 8 of that year. The number actually distributed is unknown, but the June striking might indicate the initial 25 sets had sold out. The number of coins surviving today is much smaller, as PCGS and NGC have combined to certify only 15 coins, including an unknown number of resubmissions and crossovers (3/17). PCGS CoinFacts estimates the surviving population as 14-16 examples in all grades, while our roster of known specimens lists 10 coins, with three pieces impounded in institutional collections at the Smithsonian Institution, ANS, and the Bass Foundation. No example of the 1866 proof double eagle has been publicly offered by the leading auction companies since 2007.

The design of the double eagle was modified in 1866 to include the motto IN GOD WE TRUST on the reverse. The new reverse motif, known as the Type Two design among series specialists, may have increased collector-demand for the double eagle in 1866, accounting for the extra coins struck in June. Unfortunately, gold proofs brought only small premiums when offered at auction in the 19th century, so many owners, or their heirs, resorted to spending these pieces for face value during hard financial times, as twenty dollars represented a significant amount of spending power in those days. Walter Breen and other researchers refer to several impaired specimens of the 1866 double eagle in their writings, but none are currently listed in population data from the leading grading services. It is certainly likely that the small mintage of 1866 proof double eagles suffered considerable attrition in this manner.

We believe the coin offered here first surfaced in the collection of David S. Wilson, a collector from Pittsburgh who spent 50 years building his collection. Wilson had a remarkable run of gold proof sets from 1860 to 1905, which he apparently purchased directly from the Mint every year. Thus, this coin can trace its history all the way back to the Mint in 1866.

It was owned by several famous collectors over the years, like William Cutler Atwater and Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. Wilson's proof set was split up by B. Max Mehl in his sale of Atwater's collection, so this coin has been offered individually since that time (1946). Its last auction appearance was in the January-February Auction, held by Superior Galleries in 1993, which also featured the King of Siam proof set.

To read the complete article, see:
1866 $20 With Motto, PR65 Cameo NGC. Gold CAC.... (https://coins.ha.com/itm/liberty-double-eagles/double-eagles/1866-20-with-motto-pr65-cameo-ngc-gold-cac/a/1254-4356.s)

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