1860 $10 Colorado Gold - Clark Gruber 'Pikes Peak' Eagle NGC MS62

This spectacular specimen is one of the absolutely rarest of territorial gold coins struck during the gold rushes in the Old West. NGC has graded 7 as MS62, with a sole example graded finer as MS63. Plus it is housed in the exclusive NGC Green Label holder; only the finest coins are placed in such holders. If you are a specialist in territorial gold, and have the required resources, then perhaps this piece should be the newest addition to your collection.

The 1860 Clark, Gruber & Co. ten dollar pieces, like all the 1860 issues, were struck in unalloyed gold, causing the soft gold coins to wear down quickly. As a result, the issue is seldom encountered in Mint State grades today. A small amount of silver was added to the 1861 issues, to alleviate this problem. The obverse design of the ten and twenty dollar pieces featured an artist's conception of Pike's Peak that was not very realistic and was replaced by the more familiar head of Liberty the following year.

The private mint of Clark, Gruber & Company in Denver, Colorado, where this stunning offering from AUCM was minted in 1860. Photo: denverlibrary.org.

The firm of Clark, Gruber & Co. began as a banking partnership in Leavenworth, Kansas. The firm’s principals were the brothers Austin M. and Milton Edward Clark and Emanuel Henry Gruber. Upon the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858, the miners found it much more convenient to sell the yellow metal to the banking business in Kansas, instead of shipping it to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia to be produced as coins. The evolution of their Kansas banking business into a private mint was presented by partner E.H. Gruber in an article he wrote for the Denver Times in 1904:

My firm was one of the heaviest purchasers of gold dust in the early days. And when we bought a large quantity of dust, we had to ship it to the states to have it coined into money. This was a rather expensive proceeding, as there were only stage coaches and pony express reaching this city in those days, and we had to pay 5 percent of the value of the dust as an insurance against loss in transit and another 5 percent expressage. Our dust was out of our hands for anywhere from three weeks to three months, and often times the cash we would have in transit would total nearly $300,000. This was considerable money to have and yet not be able to use for months at a time, so one day the idea struck me that the firm of Clark, Gruber & Co. bankers should also become coiners.