1851 $50 California Gold Quintuple Eagle - Augustus Humbert 887 Thous. RE PCGS XF40

Important rarity from the early days of the California Gold Rush.

In 1851 the United States Assay Office of Gold in San Francisco struck $50 slugs marked '887 THOUS' (referring to the fineness of the gold). PCGS has graded 21 as XF40, with 59 finer. Plus this specimen is housed in the ever-popular PCGS 'Old Green Holder.'

The year 1851 saw Augustus Humbert appointed to the job of United States Assayer in California, and that same year he created a provisional government mint, the United States Assay Office of Gold, in order to fulfill the monetary needs of the people of the new state of California. In 1851 and 1852 Humbert minted $50 gold slugs that were accepted at par with legal tender Federal-issued coinage.

Gold miners during the California Gold Rush. Gold from the gold fields of 1851 were used to produce this dramatic offering from AUCM.

A report from 1911, published in the American Journal of Numismatics, discusses this rarity even then:

The comparative scarcity of the fifty-dollar slugs at the present time, notwithstanding the enormous number originally struck, may be ascribed to the fact that as the ungainly pieces were worth much above their face value, a considerable profit was derived from remelting them. Foreign bankers, it is said, preferred the octagonal ingots to regular American coin, and they were exported in huge quantities, some direct from California, others from New York City. An item appeared in one of the papers on Jan. 13, 1853, to the effect that the steamer Asia, from New York to Liverpool, took $200,000 in fifty-dollar gold pieces.