Unless you are a collector who has been living as a hermit in a cave for the past six months, you are aware that the price of gold is going through the roof. Two years ago, we took a look at James B. Longacre's Coronet gold $20 double eagle design, struck from 1850 to 1907, and saw that these largest circulating U.S. gold coins, each with an actual gold weight of 0.97 ounce, sported a few dates with some growth potential. Though some of the price tags were high, there was still something of a sleeper factor among several of the dates.

Both the 1893 and 1898 Coronet gold $20 double eagles are coins that still have room to grow in value, especially in higher Mint State grades.

As this is being written, the spot price of gold has surpassed the $900-per-ounce mark, and it doesn't seem likely to stop anytime soon. The coins we're going to examine, from the tail end of the Coronet $20 series, have price tags that will make collectors of more modest means blanch. Let's compare our previous prices with today's values, and see just what has changed over the past two years.

First, note that two years ago, the baseline price for a double eagle in Mint State 62 was $800. That has now moved up to $1,325, meaning that the common coins in our table are showing the effects of the movement in gold prices. The common-date pieces we have tabulated all have mintage totals of more than 1 million pieces and all date/Mint mark combinations have risen in value.

Yet, look at the scarcer dates in the table. The 1891 and 1891-CC double eagles, for example, are both coins with tiny respective original mintages of 1,390 and 5,000. Two years ago, Coin Values didn't even list a price for the 1891 double eagle in the higher two grades of Mint State 60 and Mint State 62. The About Uncirculated 58 value was a whopping $40,000 then. But now even coins in AU-58 have jumped in value. As for coins in the MS-60 or MS-62 grades, well, if a person had been able to snag one of these beauties back then - perhaps at an auction - he or she would make a very substantial profit reselling it today.

In the Sleepers article from two years ago, we mentioned that coins such as the 1891, 1891-CC, 1892 double eagles and a few other of the scarcer dates were actually sleepers. Though their values were definitely high, we simply pointed out that their prices, when compared with the mintages and values of the common coins, still had some growing room. Some of that seems to have closed. Believe it or not, even with the huge premiums these scarce dates command, some sleeper potential still remains. Unfortunately, the majority of collectors don't have that kind of disposable cash. But it's still fun to imagine!

Getting away from the earliest dates we have tabulated, the trend in the more common coins is noticeable upward. While the prices have risen, they have done so in a rather steady fashion. That means some coins within the dates posted still have sleeper potential.

Images courtesy of Stack's. The 1901 Coronet double eagle was a sleeper two years ago, and has yet to tap all of its potential value. Shown is an About Uncirculated 58 example.

For example, see the 1893 Coronet double eagle. This coin is certainly far more common that the 1891 or 1892 double eagles, but it has a much lower mintage than the common dates in our table. Yet its prices are still almost the same as those common dates. The 1893 Coronet double eagle was a coin worth buying two years ago, and it's still worth buying today.
The 1898 Coronet double eagle is another date that has the same thing going for it as the 1893 $20 piece. Admittedly, it goes up above the base line of the other, more common coins in MS-62, but as with most series of coins, the highest grades are usually where the biggest gains are made over time.

Two years back we pointed out that the 1901 Coronet double eagle was a sleeper in all three grades. That's still true today. The mintage is rather low (111,430), and even though the third-party grading services show a healthy posting for this date, there's no doubt that this coin has some room to increase in value.

The 1902 Coronet double eagle is yet another coin that retains some potential for growth, even after the recent surge in gold prices. Despite the $4,500 price for an example in MS-62, this seems to be a coin that any collector would want. If anything, this coin is more undervalued today than it was when we first looked at it.

Despite rising in value during the past two years, the lower mintage 1902 Coronet double eagle still remains undervalued at $4,500 in Mint State 62.

The final lower mintage coin in our table is the 1905 Coronet double eagle. At first glance it may seem pricey, but when the mintage figure is only 58,919 pieces, the $5,000 price in MS-62 is probably justified. The 1902 double eagle shows better value for its mintage, but the 1905 $20 coin isn't really far behind. Both are coins most collectors would love to own.Looking back, when we first looked at this group of latter dates in the Coronet $20 double eagle series, we commented, "when it comes to sleepers, this is a series that has the allure of massive returns, should they ever awake." We see now, they are definitely waking up. While some people may be kicking themselves for not having
bought - and bought big - when the prices were lower, it's now worth asking if these already rising prices are going to go even higher. There may be still more potential in this series. The ride isn't over yet.

Numismaster.com