The Mickley-Hawn-Queller specimen of the 1804 $1 silver dollar or known among collectors as "KING OF AMERICAN COINS" sold for $3,877,500 including buyer premium in Heritage Auction Platinum Night event on Friday, Aug. 9. Heritage Auctions did not disclose the name of the buyer.
The Mickley-Hawn-Queller specimen 1804 silver dollar is now one of the Top 5 coin in my World most expensive coins list; Top 5 World Most expensive coins.
Only eight coins exist for the Class I 1804 $1 and the Mickley-Hawn-Queller specimen of the 1804 $1 auction by Heritage is graded PR62 by both PCGS and NGC, from The Greensboro Collection, Part IV.
Prices for 1804 dollars at auction soared as the decades passed. In 1960, the Davis Restrike 1804 dollar brought $28,000 at auction, while in 1970 the Mickley Original specimen realized $77,500. In 1980, at one of the U.S. coin market's great heights, the Berg Restrike example reached $400,000, while the 1989 offering of the Dexter Original representative saw it go for $990,000, another bull-market record tantalizingly close to the million-dollar threshold. The Stickney Original piece, which in 1946 was the first five-figure U.S. coin at $10,500, became the first seven-figure 1804 dollar and the most expensive U.S. coin ever auctioned when it sold as part of the legendary Eliasberg Collection in 1997 for $1,815,000. The Sultan of Muscat Original, universally considered the best-preserved of 1804 dollars, leapfrogged that price to bring $4,140,000 in 1999, a record that stood for several years.
As of June 2013, two of the top ten all-time U.S. coin prices realized at auction belong to Original 1804 dollars, including the last offering of the Mickley coin, by Heritage in 2008, at $3,737,500. Just outside the top ten is the most recent auction result for an 1804 dollar, the Adams Restrike piece in a 2009 Heritage auction at $2,300,000. The various 1804 dollars have sold for more than a million dollars at auction six separate times, a feat unmatched by any other issue, and this offering of the Mickley specimen will add even more weight to the 1804 dollar's claim as the "King of American Coins."
Source: Heritage Auction.
