1878-S $10 MS(PCGS#8682)

Spring 2026 Showcase Auction U.S. Coins

Auctioneer

Stack's Bowers

Lot Number

3150

Grade

MS60

Price

9,600

Lot Description

This is an impressive condition rarity to represent an otherwise relatively obtainable 1870s San Francisco Mint ten-dollar gold issue. Vivid rose-gold surfaces are lustrous with a softly frosty, faintly semi-reflective finish. Grade-limiting marks pepper both the fields and design elements but, while numerous, none are sizeable enough to be singularly distracting during in-hand viewing. The strike is bold, and there is plenty of eye appeal.<p>Like the Philadelphia Mint, the facility in San Francisco stepped up eagle production in 1878 in anticipation of the government mandate that gold and paper currency would once again be exchangeable at par as of January 1, 1879. The mintage for the 1878-S amounted to 26,100 pieces, small in an absolute sense, but sufficiently large to help rank this issue as the second most plentiful S-Mint eagle from the 1870s.<p>On the other hand, when the 26,100 1878-S eagles left the San Francisco Mint's presses, they received essentially no numismatic attention. Rather, the coins entered circulation and saw heavy use for many years. Numismatists of the day were not interested in collecting coins by mintmark and generally preferred to acquire a Proof rather than a circulation strike. By the time mintmark collecting took off in the 1890s, what few 1878-S eagles remained in circulation were all heavily worn. Today, though the issue is not a particularly rare eagle in an absolute sense, the vast quantity of surviving pieces fall into either VF or EF grades and are seldom seen finer. There are a small group of coins that are About Uncirculated, but Mint State remains a brick wall that has only been scaled a dozen times at PCGS and NGC combined. For Liberty Head gold coinage specialists trying to assemble a Mint State collection, this issue has long been a roadblock. That roadblock can be cleared with this offering, but only for the bidder with the most aggressive strategy. Once this coin sells it could be many years before a similar opportunity presents itself.