1890-S

Mintmark "S" beneath the eagle on this Type 3 Liberty Head Double Eagle places it firmly within San Francisco's late-century output, when Pacific gold flowed inland to settle international trade balances and underpin domestic specie reserves. James B. Longacre's 1849 portrait of Liberty had by 1890 been refined into the matured Type 3 design (TWENTY DOLLARS spelled in full on the reverse, motto IN GOD WE TRUST overhead), and San Francisco production that year fell into the comfortable middle of the decade's western mintage cadence. The bulk of the 802,750 coins struck went directly into bank vaults or moved overseas in commercial shipments, ensuring widespread survival but uneven preservation among the pieces that did remain stateside.

Strike quality on San Francisco Type 3 Double Eagles of this era tends to be sharper than corresponding Philadelphia issues, with crisply defined hair detail above Liberty's ear and well struck stars along the obverse periphery. Bag marks are the dominant grade limiter rather than weakness, since the heavy gold planchets jostled aggressively against one another in mint sacks. Examples surface routinely through XF45 and AU58, but choice mint state survivors carry meaningful premiums. The 2013 Saddle Ridge Hoard discovery in Northern California radically altered the condition census for this date: among the 1,427 buried coins, the cache contained ten 1890-S pieces graded MS64, another ten in MS64+, and fourteen specimens grading higher still through PCGS encapsulation.

That hoard transformed what had been a genuine MS64 conditional rarity into a date with a documented cluster of finest-known candidates, reshaping auction trajectories almost overnight. A Heritage Auctions appearance of an 1890-S Saddle Ridge example certified MS64 PCGS represents one of the cleaner provenance chains a Type 3 Double Eagle collector can attain, since the find spot, recovery year, and grading event are all matters of public record. Bordered on the calendar by the 774,700-coin 1889-S and the more abundant 1,288,125-piece 1891-S, this issue offers eye-appealing strike characteristics at moderate cost when sourced carefully. Continue exploring the broader Liberty Head Double Eagle series history.