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

Congress Authorized a Three-Dollar Coin Primarily to Facilitate the Purchase of Stamp Sheets

The Act of February 21, 1853, which authorized the three-dollar gold piece, was passed in the same legislative session that introduced the silver three-cent piece and reduced the weight of silver coins smaller than a dollar. The postal connection was explicit in congressional debate: a sheet of one hundred three-cent stamps cost exactly three dollars, and the new coin would enable that transaction in a single piece. Whether this practical rationale was sufficient to justify a new denomination was disputed at the time and remains doubtful in retrospect. The coin never achieved broad commercial use in its 35-year life. Regular business struck coinage began on May 1, 1854, with 138,618 pieces at Philadelphia and branch mint production of 1,120 at Dahlonega and 24,000 at New Orleans, the only years 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 used this same sharp-nosed classical profile on the gold dollar of 1849 and later adapted it 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. One minor but useful variety marker: the 1854 issue has DOLLARS in smaller letters than all subsequent dates, where the letters are larger.²

The 1870-S Is the Only Known 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, Virgil Brand, and Louis C. 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. Heritage Auctions, January 5, 2023, The Harry W. Bass Jr. Core Collection Part II, U.S. Coins Signature Auction, Orlando FUN, PCGS Specimen 50, $5,520,000, a new world record for the denomination. The coin is presently on display at the American Numismatic Association's Edward C. Rochette Money Museum in Colorado Springs.³

Three Years Had No Business Strikes, and One Had Only a Cornerstone Coin

In 1873 the Mint issued three-dollar pieces in two distinct date styles: the Closed 3, where the numerals closely resemble each other and an 8 is sometimes read in place of the 3, and the Open 3, corrected at the direction of Chief Coiner Archibald Loudon Snowden after a January 18, 1873 complaint about illegibility. The Closed 3 carries an official mintage of 25 business strikes, though more than 25 examples are believed to have been produced; the Open 3 exists only as a Proof with no recorded business strike mintage. 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, with an estimated 75 to 100 surviving in all grades and very few in Mint State.⁴

Illicit Restrikes Undermined Confidence in Several Key Dates

The rising collector interest in three-dollar pieces during the 1880s created incentives for misconduct at the Philadelphia Mint. 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. The problem does not render these coins uncollectable, but it informs the authentication standards the series requires: the population of known Proof 1875 and 1876 pieces exceeds what official mintage figures would predict, and distinguishing original strikes from restrikes has occupied specialists for well over a century. A separate and more benign footnote to the series' late years: the 1887 issue had one of its higher post-Civil War mintages because a brief fad of the period involved men having one face of a three-dollar piece ground smooth and replaced 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 closely 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, with its extreme rarity in all grades, is among the most challenging branch mint coins in the entire federal gold series. The primary specialist references are Bowers, Q. David, and Douglas Winter, A Guide Book of Three Dollar and Four Dollar Gold Coins (Atlanta: Whitman Publishing, 2005), and Breen, Walter, Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins (New York: F.C.I. Press/Doubleday, 1988).⁶