1867-S

Struck in the fourteenth year of San Francisco eagle production from a business-strike mintage of just 9,000 pieces, the 1867-S sits among the dates Doug Winter has flagged as the most underappreciated in the entire With Motto S-mint run. Independent rarity work places survivorship at roughly 50 to 75 examples across all grades, with no examples confirmed in Mint State, putting the issue squarely in semi-key territory and arguably tougher in absolute terms than several Carson City dates that command multiples of its money. Reconstruction-era Pacific commerce churned the date hard, and the typical survivor reflects working circulation rather than the cabinet shelf.

Most genuine 1867-S eagles grade between Fine and Extremely Fine, and any honest About Uncirculated piece is a meaningful condition rarity that warrants careful third-party review. Authentication starts with the 16.718-gram weight standard and a specific gravity near 17.2 to expose gold-plated tungsten or base-metal cores that miss the alloy density of a genuine 90 percent fine eagle. The S mintmark itself deserves close inspection under magnification: added-mintmark forgeries built from common Philadelphia 1867 eagles are a known concern on this date, and the punch should sit cleanly within the wreath ribbon area rather than appearing tooled, soldered, or showing disturbed surrounding metal. Examiners should also confirm that the Type 2 motto scroll above the eagle is sharply integrated and not strengthened, as enhancement of weak design elements to push a circulated piece into a higher technical grade is a recurring problem on rare Reconstruction S-mint gold.

Demand for the date comes almost entirely from Liberty eagle date-set specialists rather than the broader gold-type market, which keeps mid-grade pricing surprisingly accessible against the underlying scarcity. Heritage and Stack's Bowers records show VF and EF examples trading in the mid-four-figure range, with strong AU coins reaching well into five figures when they appear. For a collector willing to accept honest circulated surfaces, the 1867-S offers one of the better cost-to-rarity propositions in post-Civil War U.S. gold, and any original-skin example with cleanly defined mintmark detail deserves serious attention. Additional context lives in the Liberty Head Eagle series history.