Heritage to Auction Unique Specimen 1906-D Barber Dime

Dallas, Texas: A unique specimen striking of a 1906-D Barber dime will be the featured coin in Heritage's Santa Clara Signature Sale, being held November 16-17 at the Santa Clara Coin Expo. The coin, certified as Specimen MS 64 by Numismatic Guaranty Corporation, wasn't known to the numismatic world until 1976.

The Denver Mint, the producer of more than half of our country's circulating coinage today, traces its lineage back to the private mint of Clark, Gruber & Co., the most respected and successful of the territorial mints that served the Colorado Gold Rush. Despite their efforts, they were unable to produce sufficient coinage for the burgeoning population. On the eve of the Civil War, the Colorado Territory boasted a population of twenty-five to thirty thousand inhabitants, with hundreds more arriving each day. As many of these were miners, the existing supply of private coinage was woefully inadequate to prevent them from resorting to gold dust as a medium of exchange.

The Colorado Territorial Convention of the Republican Party met on July 2, 1861 and drafted a resolution calling for a federal mint in Denver to supercede the activities of the local establishments. Amazingly, Clark, Gruber & Co. admitted their shortcomings, supported the resolution, and even offered to sell their property to the federal government for the new mint. Congress passed the bill establishing a branch mint in Denver on April 21, 1862; after a year of the usual red tape and political jargon, Uncle Sam purchased the Clark, Gruber & Co. building on April 16, 1863 for the lofty sum of $25,000. After more than five months of extensive remodeling, the new mint was apparently ready to begin operations. For unknown reasons, however, Congress changed its mind at the last minute and opened the Denver facility merely as an assay office on September 24. It languished in this inglorious, although necessary role until early 1906, when Congress finally approved its operations as a full-fledged branch mint.

To commemorate this long-awaited event, the Denver Mint produced a limited number of specimen (or proof) strikings in 1906. An unknown number of proof 1906-D Liberty eagles, along with 12 proof 1906-D Liberty double eagles, were delivered for presentation purposes. For years, numismatists believed that these were the only two denominations to receive such attention in 1906. In 1976, however, Walter Breen examined a 1906-D Barber dime at the NCNA Convention in San Francisco's Jack Tar Hotel. He concluded that the coin was indeed a specimen striking due to the following characteristics: the dies are in their earliest state and have been brilliantly polished; and the coin was given at least two impressions from the dies as every device is as boldly defined as similarly dated proofs from the Philadelphia Mint.

In 1989, this coin was certified Specimen MS 64 by NGC, an event that was announced in the July 12, 1989 edition of Coin World. Not only is it unique, it is also the discovery coin for this variety that Breen (1977) mentions in his encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial proof coins. This lot includes a letter written by Breen dated December 21, 1976, verifying that this is the coin that he examined, and giving his interpretation of the die variety and proof characteristics. Also included is the September 12, 1976 Coin World article that announced NGC's certification of this coin.