I stopped collecting coins once I entered college because of a lack of time and money.  Then, after graduating from college, my hobby turned to stock investing.  However, in the spring of 2006 I started reading more and more about the upcoming housing crisis.  The price increases in homes since 2000 were enormous and unsustainable.  This led me to sell off a large percentage of my stocks and I decided that gold and gold stocks would be a good place to put some of my money.  However, instead of just investing in gold bullion, my passion for coin collecting re-emerged and led me to focus on collecting gold coins from the United States of America in 2008.  I chose to collect coins that I thought were undervalued and scarce.  I thought that the Philadelphia and San Fransisco gold coins in denominations ranging between $1 gold pieces and $10 gold pieces offered the best value.  The scarce coins that I focused on had less than 150 coins in the NGC census. When my father passed away, I purchased my grandfather’s relatively common 1925D $2.5 gold coin from my mother for sentimental reasons.

Here are the mints in the US along with their mintmarks and time in operation:

•    Philadelphia, P or none, 1793 – Present
•    Charlotte, C, 1838–1861
•    Dahlonega, D, 1838–1861
•    New Orleans, O, 1838–1861 and 1879-1909
•    San Francisco, S or none, 1854 – Present
•    Carson City, CC, 1870–1885 and 1889-1893
•    Denver, D, 1906 - Present
 

My three favorite US gold sets are:

•    Philadelphia Mint Gold Issues, Complete Circulation Issue - https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/132169/
•    San Francisco Gold, Complete Circulation Issue - https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/119605/ 
•    Philadelphia and San Francisco gold coins from the Civil War reconstruction era (1866-1878) - https://coins.www.collectors-society.com/WCM/CoinCustomSetView.aspx?s=1036
 

Here I provide information about the 5 coins shown in the header, i.e., date, mint, denomination, grade, NGC population (total, same grade, higher grade).

•    1894-S, $10, NGC-CAC MS62, (172, 1, 0)
•    1856-S, $5, NGC-CAC AU-58, (167, 16, 6)
•    1870, $3, PCGS MS-62, (297, 7, 6)
•    1845, $2.5, NGC MS63, (281, 12, 8)
•    1857-S, $1, NGC MS-62, (121, 4, 2)

Boy, the NGC populations have increased significantly since I purchased these coins!  Some of the increases are probably due to people cracking out coins and resubmitting them.  

After selling some of my stocks I had a bunch of cash that was just burning a hole in my pocket. Well after discovering the big US coin auction houses, I was like a kid in a candy store and made many purchases early in 2008 (in hindsight, not the best choice).  Note that the 1870 $3 gold piece was the first coin that I purchased from an auction house, i.e., Stacks in January 2008.  Likewise, the 1845 $2.5 gold coin was in the first set of coins I purchased from Heritage one week later. A month after that, I purchased the 1894-S $10 and the 1857-S $1. In a later post I will share some of my experiences with the first US gold coins that I purchased, and the lessons I learned, if there is an interest.