PCGS COIN OF THE ISSUE
The Eliasberg 1855 Proof Kellogg $50 Gold By Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez
When James W. Marshall first found gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California, on January 24, 1848, a fervor swept through the land, drawing some 300,000 people from throughout the United States and even from overseas. The Gold Rush helped spur the creation of California as a state in 1850, and it led to a population boom that far exceeded anything the supply of federal coinage could service during those prosperous times on the frontier. Assayers established offices throughout the bustling pioneer towns, where gold was deposited, refined, and manufactured into ingots, slugs, and tokens bearing face values. Gold became the currency of the West, and the myriad of privately struck pieces filled a major void created by a shortage of federally struck coins from the United States Mint. Today, the catalog of California gold reads like a Who’s Who of assay firms. One of the most familiar is that of Kellogg & Co. Founded by John G. Kellogg, a true ‘49er who ventured from Auburn, New York, to San Francisco in October 1849, Kellogg & Co., issued large-denomination gold coinage that remains one of the hottest collectibles today among California territorial and private mintings. The heftiest by far is a $50 gold coin, a rare treasure of which there are just 14 specimens known. A specimen graded PCGS PR63DCAM traces its provenance back to the collector’s collector himself, Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr., a 20th-century Baltimore numismatist whose collection was once deemed the most complete of its kind, even ranking as a major feature in a 1953 issue of Life magazine. Coins tracing back to his legendary collection garner premiums not just because of the person who once owned them but also because Eliasberg knew quality – he demanded it. In his 1855 Proof Kellogg $50 slug, an Eliasberg family favorite, quality shines in the strike, the color, and the overall eye appeal of this landmark rarity from one of the most famous American collections.
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1855 Proof Kellogg $50, PCGS PR63DCAM. Courtesy of PCGS TrueView “It has been a personal pleasure and honor to work with Richard Eliasberg in the presentation of the Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. Collection over the years,” said Stack's Bowers Galleries' Executive Vice President Christine Karstedt. “Once again, this famous name comes to the forefront as we bring another of Mr. Eliasberg's spectacular rarities to auction in November 2023 with our Whitman Baltimore Winter Expo auction. Fittingly nicknamed the ‘King of Territorial Gold,’ this 1855 Kellogg & Co. $50 came into the Eliasberg Collection directly from the John H. Clapp Collection and has remained in the family ever since.” Karstedt added, “It’s bittersweet seeing the last handful of items from such a monumental collection come to market, but I look forward to shaking the hand of the next caretaker of such a significant piece of history.”
Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez has won multiple awards from the NLG and ANA for his work as a numismatic journalist and editor. He has been a coin collector since 1992 and enjoys all areas of United States coinage and U.S. minting history.
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