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1852 $50 Augustus Humbert Gold Slug Coin NGC AU Details

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:1.00 USD Estimated At:38,500.00 - 42,500.00 USD
1852 $50 Augustus Humbert Gold Slug Coin NGC AU Details
NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER), HIGH BID WAS
8,000.00USD+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2020 Jun 20 @ 07:00UTC-7 : PDT/MST
One 1852 $50 Augustus Humbert Gold Slug Coin NGC AU Details. The 1851-52 Augustus Humbert-U.S. Assay Office octagonal fifty dollar gold pieces were the Gold Rush equivalent of today taking a one-ounce American Platinum Eagle into a store to pay for groceries. The first Humbert fifty dollar octagonal coins appeared in February 1851. Don Kagin writes in Private Gold Coins and Patterns of the United States: "The new 'government' issues forced most of the inferior privately issued gold pieces out of circulation, although the private coins did not cease operations until March. The Mormon and Pacific Company coins especially were received at their true intrinsic value and remelted into $50 slugs. This sufficiently cleansed the business world of debased coins formerly tolerated because of necessity." Of course, the fifty dollar issues of 1851-52 completely failed to alleviate a more basic problem, a chronic shortage of gold coins in denominations less than fifty dollars, which the melting of the discredited coins exacerbated. Washington bureaucrats in July 1851 again rejected the call to mint smaller-denomination coins, calling it "not deemed expedient." The public view of the fifty dollar ingots continued to dim as merchants were forced to use foreign coins to make change for the large pieces. Small-denomination federal gold coins fetched premiums, while merchants would discount the fifty dollar gold coins from 2% to 4% -- as Kagin writes, "not much of an improvement over the undervalued private coinage of several months just past." Fortunately, Moffat and Company and U.S. Assay Office ten and twenty dollar pieces dated 1852 alleviated the situation -- and obviated the need for the large fifty dollar slugs, which would end with the 1852 coinage. NGC Certified.