1860 $10 Colorado Gold - Clark Gruber 'Pikes Peak' Eagle NGC XF40

This rarity is a historic relic of the Pikes Peak (Colorado) Gold Rush. NGC has graded 4 as XF40 with 62 finer. This coin was struck by the most successful private mint in the Pikes Peak region of Colorado, the Leavenworth, KS, company of Clark, Gruber & Co.

Pikes Peak, the iconic mountain that appears on the coin offered by AUCM. 

The Rocky Mountain News, July 25, 1860, described the Clark, Gruber & Co. facility and the mintage of $10 coins:

 [Upon] invitation we forthwith repaired to the elegant banking house of the firm…and were admitted to their coining room in the basement, where we found preparations almost complete for the issue of Pikes Peak coin. A hundred 'blanks' had been prepared, weight and fineness tested, and last manipulation gone through with prior to their passage through the stamping press. The little engine that drives the machinery was fired up, belts adjusted, and between 3 and 4 o'clock the machinery was put in motion and 'mint drop' of the value of $10 each began dropping into a tin pail with the most musical 'clink.'

About $1,000 were turned out, at the rate of fifteen or twenty coins a minute, which was deemed satisfactory for the first equipment. The coins--of which none but $10 pieces are yet coined--are seventeen grains heavier than the United States coin of the same denomination. On the face is a representation of the Peak, its base surrounded by a forest of timber, and 'Pikes Peak Gold' encircling the summit. Immediately under its base is the word 'Denver' and beneath it 'Ten D.' On the reverse is the American eagle, encircled by the name of the firm 'Clark, Gruber & Co.,' and beneath it the date, '1860.' The coin has a little of the roughness peculiar to newness, but is upon the whole, very credible in appearance, and a vast improvement over 'dust' as a circulating medium.