1891-S

Among 1891-dated double eagles, the San Francisco issue carries virtually all collector demand by default. The Philadelphia striking that year is one of the legendary Fab Five rarities at just 1,442 coins, and the Carson City entry sits among the Big Five CC keys at roughly 5,000 pieces. Both trade in five and six figures when they trade at all. That leaves the S-mint as the only practical route into the date for nearly every cabinet builder, type collector, and gold accumulator working the Coronet series. As a Type 3 issue with motto and TWENTY DOLLARS spelled out, it represents the design configuration most familiar to modern eyes and the workhorse format of the western mint during the post-resumption era.

The 1891-S is broadly available through About Uncirculated and into the lower mint state grades, with most survivors clustering in MS61 and MS62 from years of bag-to-bag commercial handling. PCGS describes it as a common date in any grade short of choice uncirculated, comparable in overall rarity to the 1897-S and 1907-S, and notes that gem material is genuinely scarce, a description applicable to most Liberty double eagles outside the eight or ten most plentiful issues. Strikes tend toward sharp central detail with the typical S-mint signatures: bold star centers, well-defined hair curls beneath the coronet, and reverse eagle plumage that shows full feather separation when the dies were fresh.

The Saddle Ridge Hoard, recovered from a Northern California ranch in 2013 and totaling 1,427 coins, included twenty-six examples of this date, one of which was identified as a contemporary counterfeit during PCGS authentication. That hoard provided a small infusion of choice uncirculated coins to the certified market, though the date had already been adequately represented in higher grades through European bank repatriations earlier in the modern era. Buyers evaluating an 1891-S today should weigh luster quality, mark concentration on Liberty's cheek and the eagle's breast, and overall eye appeal more heavily than raw grade number, since population pressure thins quickly above MS63. For deeper background, see our Liberty Head Double Eagle series history.