1861 Paquet

Philadelphia began striking 1861 double eagles on January 5 using Anthony C. Paquet's revised reverse die, with taller, narrower letters intended to improve legibility, and halted production the same day. The design's enlarged field diameter left an unusually shallow rim; Mint Director James Ross Snowden recognized the defect immediately, ordered Philadelphia's operations stopped, and sent telegrams to the branch mints to suspend use of the new dies. New Orleans complied before striking a Paquet piece. San Francisco's notice arrived nearly a month later by overland courier, by which time 19,250 1861-S Paquet pieces were already in commerce. Snowden directed that Philadelphia's struck examples be melted, and the recall was so complete that no separate mintage figure exists in Mint records.

Exactly two business strikes are confirmed in private hands — a survival rate extraordinary even among the great U.S. rarities. The finer of the two is the Norweb specimen, graded PCGS MS-67 CAC, with a pedigree running through Parmelee, Virgil Brand, F.C.C. Boyd, King Farouk, and the Norweb family before its $660,000 result in the 1988 Norweb sale. The second is the Dallas Bank specimen, graded PCGS MS-61, which surfaced in Paris in 1965 after eighty-eight years of unrecorded ownership. The Norweb coin realized $7,200,000 at Heritage's August 2021 ANA Signature Auction, the highest price ever paid for a Liberty Head double eagle. The Dallas Bank piece brought $1,645,000 at Heritage's August 2014 Platinum Night, a result that still stands as the only example a private collector has had any realistic opportunity to acquire in two decades.

Within the hierarchy of regular-issue U.S. coinage, the 1861 Paquet ranks fourth rarest behind three unique pieces — the 1870-S half dime, the 1873-CC No Arrows dime, and the 1870-S three-dollar gold. Diagnostics distinguishing it from the standard Longacre reverse center on letter geometry: the O in OF is nearly oval rather than round, the shield border carries two lines rather than one, horizontal shield lines count sixteen rather than fourteen, and the stars sit visually separated from the rays rather than nested among them. Authentication is handled exclusively by PCGS or NGC at this level; neither known survivor has been offered at a price that would allow private confusion, and no third example has emerged in modern times. For the Paquet recall story in full and its role in the Type I rarity structure, see the Liberty Head Double Eagle series history.