1862 Liberty Head Double Eagle. AU-53 (PCGS).

1862 Liberty Head Double Eagle. AU-53 (PCGS).，A warmly patinated, overall sharply defined example with plenty of original mint luster remaining. With the Civil War going badly for Union forces, gold and silver coins all but disappeared from circulation. Gold was trading at a premium above the newly introduced Demand notes and Legal Tender notes. Once specie payments were suspended in late 1861, banks saw little need for double eagles in the North. Only 92,133 examples of the denomination came off the Philadelphia Mints coin presses, a far cry from the nearly three million that were struck the year before. The vast majority of the issue saw use in the export trade almost exclusively with precious few survivors have since been repatriated in recent decades. Even rarer still are those found in wrecks - the treasure of the<em> S.S. Brother Jonathan </em>yielded a solitary coin. Rare in all grades and nigh impossible to acquire Mint State, perhaps a couple dozen AU specimens are thought to remain. A seldom-encountered treasure for the advanced specialist.，，