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HERITAGE OFFERS DON CHAPMAN U.S. GOLD COLLECTIONSteve Lansdale of Heritage Auctions shared this information about how one of their consignors got started in the hobby. Thanks! -Editor NASA Gold Medal Starts A Collector's Journey Heritage Auctions will be offering the Don Chapman Collection as one of the featured collections of coins in the June 2020 Long Beach Auction #1316. While one of these coins is neat enough that I already put in a PR Power about that specific lot, today I learned a great backstory for the collection. Don Chapman was a programmer for NASA's Apollo missions and received a gold medal from NASA that got him interested in coin collecting. While much of his work was private due to its level of importance, numismatics was a hobby that he could happily share with his family. He began collecting American gold coins and particularly sought out $20 Liberties. One of the collection's highlights is this 1871-CC double eagle. -Editor   1871-CC $20 AU58 NGC. Variety 1-A. The second 1 in the date is centered over the denticle below. If we were to rule out the famous first-year 1870-CC double eagle as an unobtainable rarity, then the 1871-CC twenty would rightly take its place among the most challenging Carson City issues collectors could ever hope to obtain. The mintage for the 1871-CC double eagle is disputed. Carson City expert Rusty Goe claims in his 2003 reference, The Mint on Carson Street, that 14,687 coins were struck. The Guide Book reports a total production of 17,387 pieces. Experts are in relative agreement when it comes to the number of survivors -- an estimated 200 to 250 coins. Of those, the vast majority are in VF and XF grades. Doug Winter, who suggests an AU survivorship of 45 to 50 coins, wrote in 2001: "This is a very scarce date in about Uncirculated and most of the pieces known in this grade range are no better than About Uncirculated-50. The 1871-CC becomes rare in About Uncirculated-55 and it is very rare in About Uncirculated-58. This is an extremely rare coin in Uncirculated with just two or three pieces currently known." What was true then remains true today. Unlike other Carson City issues from the mid-1870s and 1880s, no vast quantities of the 1871-CC have come out of European vaults over the last two decades. Examples remain major rarities in AU58, and only a handful of coins are known in Mint State. Specifically, NGC reports 18 AU58 grading events and five finer (4/20). The certification totals are almost certainly inflated by resubmissions, so take them with a grain of salt. To read the complete lot description, see:
Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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