1897 $20 Liberty Head Double Eagle NGC MS-63

1897 Liberty Head Double Eagle, NGC MS-63 Type III — Gilded Age Philadelphia Issue

The year 1897 marked a turning point in American monetary confidence. News of the Klondike gold discovery reached the eastern seaboard that summer, igniting a stampede of prospectors northward and signaling the beginning of the end of the silver-versus-gold political crisis that had dominated the preceding decade. Against this backdrop of renewed bullion optimism, the Philadelphia Mint struck some 1.38 million Double Eagles, contributing to a combined national output exceeding 2.8 million pieces across both the Philadelphia and San Francisco facilities. This Select Uncirculated example displays the bold cartwheel luster and well-defined Type III reverse characteristic of the date, with contact marks consistent with the MS-63 grade but no distracting impairments to the fields or devices.

NGC Population (May 2026): 3,491 in MS-63, with 437 finer — a certified base modestly narrower than the 1895 Philadelphia issue, with the population above MS-63 dropping sharply and confirming the persistent scarcity of Gem survivors across the late Gilded Age Type III series.

By comparison, the common-date 1904 in the same grade has a population of 90,098 in MS-63 grade with 52,947 finer and is nearly the same price!