Indian Princess Three-Dollar Gold Pieces (1854–1889)

Congress Authorized the Three-Dollar Coin in 1853, and Its Purpose Is Still Disputed

The Act of February 21, 1853, which authorized the three-dollar gold piece, also reduced the weight of silver coins smaller than a dollar; the silver three-cent piece had been introduced separately by the Act of March 3, 1851. The usual explanation, repeated by Walter Breen among others, is postal: a sheet of one hundred three-cent stamps cost exactly three dollars, and the new coin would pay for it in a single piece. Not every writer accepts it: Don Taxay held that the provision was inserted at the behest of gold interests, and others point to the flood of California gold that needed coining. The coin never achieved broad commercial use in its 35-year life. Business-strike coinage began in May 1854, with 138,618 pieces at Philadelphia and branch mint production of 1,120 at Dahlonega and 24,000 at New Orleans, the only year those two facilities struck the denomination. San Francisco produced the three-dollar piece in 1855, 1856, 1857, 1860, and in a single specimen in 1870. The denomination was quietly discontinued along with the gold dollar and nickel three-cent piece in 1889, formally abolished by Congress on September 26, 1890. In the 1890s approximately 49,000 three-dollar pieces were melted as obsolete at Philadelphia.¹

Longacre Borrowed His Portrait from a Greco-Roman Statue, Not from Life

James Barton Longacre designed the three-dollar piece concurrently with the Type 2 gold dollar of 1854, and the two coins share both the obverse portrait and the reverse wreath. The Indian Princess obverse is not a portrait of a Native American but a profile modeled after the Venus Accroupie, a Greco-Roman marble then housed in a Philadelphia museum. Longacre later adapted the same sharp-nosed classical profile for the Indian Head cent of 1859. On the three-dollar piece, Liberty wears a headdress of equal-sized feathered plumes with a band bearing LIBERTY in raised letters, surrounded by UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. The reverse shows an agricultural wreath of tobacco, wheat, corn, and cotton encircling the denomination 3 DOLLARS and the date. Longacre prepared wax models of this wreath on brass discs that survived and document his meticulous approach. The reverse wreath was later adapted for the Flying Eagle cent of 1856 to 1858. The 1854 issue is the only date with DOLLARS in small letters; every later date has the larger lettering.²

The 1870-S Is the Only Unique Regular-Issue United States Gold Coin

A single three-dollar gold piece was struck at San Francisco in 1870, reportedly for inclusion in the cornerstone of the Second San Francisco Mint then under construction. The coin surfaced in the numismatic market in 1907, passed through the collections of William H. Woodin, Waldo C. Newcomer, Colonel E. H. R. Green, and Louis E. Eliasberg before Harry W. Bass Jr. purchased it at the Bowers and Ruddy Galleries sale of the Eliasberg gold collection in October 1982 for $687,500, then a world record for a United States gold coin. The coin shows evidence of jewelry use and bears an engraved "893" on the reverse whose meaning remains disputed among specialists. A second example is reported to be sealed in the cornerstone itself, inaccessible and unverifiable; for purposes of collecting the 1870-S is treated as unique. On January 5, 2023, at the Orlando FUN show, Heritage Auctions sold the coin, graded PCGS Specimen 50, for $5,520,000 in The Harry W. Bass Jr. Core Collection Part II U.S. Coins Signature Auction; the price set a new world record for the denomination. Before that sale the coin had been on loan with the Bass collection at the ANA's Edward C. Rochette Money Museum from 2000 to 2022.³

Two Years Were Struck Only as Proofs, and 1873 Has No Recorded Business Strikes

In 1873 the Mint issued three-dollar pieces in two distinct date styles: the Closed 3, whose 3 can be mistaken for an 8, and the Open 3, which Chief Engraver William Barber cut on the orders of Mint Director James Pollock after Chief Coiner Archibald Loudon Snowden complained about that resemblance on January 18, 1873. The Mint recorded only 25 Proofs for 1873 and no business strikes, yet circulation strikes exist, all of them Closed 3, and specialists disagree over how many were made and when. The Open 3 exists only as a Proof. Both 1873 varieties are rare in any form. In 1875 and 1876 no business strikes were produced at all; only Proofs were made available, and then only as part of complete gold Proof sets sold at a premium. The 1875 carries an official Proof mintage of 20 and the 1876 an official mintage of 45, though both dates are believed by some researchers to have been partially restruck later to satisfy collector demand. With just 1,468 business strikes, the 1877 is another severe scarcity; Stack's Bowers estimates 60 to 100 survivors in all grades, fewer than a dozen of them in Mint State.⁴

Illicit Restrikes Undermined Confidence in Several Key Dates

As collector interest in three-dollar pieces grew during the 1880s, some Philadelphia Mint employees found a market for coins struck off the books. Oliver Bosbyshell, who served as chief coiner from 1876 to 1885, is identified by Bowers as the principal figure in a systematic scheme of illicit striking of earlier-dated pieces, restrikes in different metals, and pattern coin production that flowed to well-connected collectors and dealers during those years. Bosbyshell liquidated a substantial personal collection of such pieces shortly after leaving the coiner's office. The three-dollar dates most affected by documented or suspected illicit activity include the 1873 (both varieties), 1875, and 1876. Collectors of these dates have to authenticate with care: the population of known Proof 1875 and 1876 pieces exceeds what official mintage figures would predict, and specialists still disagree over which pieces are originals and which are restrikes. Not all of the decade's unusual striking was illicit: in 1887 the series had one of its higher post-Civil War mintages because of a brief fad in which men had one face of a three-dollar piece ground smooth and engraved with a female companion's initials.⁵

Building the Set

A type set requires one coin; the 1878, the most plentiful date in Mint State, is the standard recommendation for a well-struck example at accessible cost, followed by the 1874 and 1854. Only three dates are genuinely common: 1854, 1874, and 1878. Every other Philadelphia date ranges from moderately scarce to very rare in circulated grades and is individually rare in Gem (Mint State 65 or finer). A complete set of business strikes excluding the unique 1870-S and the Proof-only 1873 Open 3, 1875, and 1876 requires patience and budget but has been assembled by determined collectors. A full set including those issues is essentially impossible without acquiring a unique coin. Collectors typically approach the three-dollar series either as an accessible type coin, a run of the relatively available Philadelphia dates from 1854 through 1889, or with the branch mint dates (1854-D, 1854-O, and the San Francisco issues) as specific targets. The 1854-D, the only three-dollar issue struck at Dahlonega, had a mintage of just 1,120; Stack's Bowers estimates 120 to 160 survivors in all grades, most of them well worn, and it is extremely rare in high grades. The primary specialist references are Bowers, Q. David, and Douglas Winter, The United States $3 Gold Pieces, 1854-1889 (Wolfeboro, NH: American Numismatic Rarities, 2005), and Breen, Walter, Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins (New York: F.C.I. Press/Doubleday, 1988).⁶