NASA Gold Medal Starts A Collector's Journey

Heritage Auctions will be offering the Don Chapman Collection as one of the featured collections of coins in the June 2020 Long Beach Auction #1316. While one of these coins isneat enough that I already put in a PR Power about that specific lot, today I learned a great backstory for the collection.

Don Chapman was a programmer for NASA's Apollo missions and received a gold medal from NASA that got him interested in coin collecting. While much of his work was private dueto its level of importance, numismatics was a hobby that he could happily share with his family. He began collecting American gold coins and particularly sought out $20Liberties.

1871-CC $20 AU58 NGC. Variety 1-A. The second 1 in the date is centered over the denticle below. If we were to rule out the famous first-year 1870-CC double eagle as anunobtainable rarity, then the 1871-CC twenty would rightly take its place among the most challenging Carson City issues collectors could ever hope to obtain.

The mintage for the 1871-CC double eagle is disputed. Carson City expert Rusty Goe claims in his 2003 reference, The Mint on Carson Street, that 14,687 coins were struck. TheGuide Book reports a total production of 17,387 pieces. Experts are in relative agreement when it comes to the number of survivors -- an estimated 200 to 250 coins. Of those, thevast majority are in VF and XF grades. Doug Winter, who suggests an AU survivorship of 45 to 50 coins, wrote in 2001:

What was true then remains true today. Unlike other Carson City issues from the mid-1870s and 1880s, no vast quantities of the 1871-CC have come out of European vaults over thelast two decades. Examples remain major rarities in AU58, and only a handful of coins are known in Mint State. Specifically, NGC reports 18 AU58 grading events and five finer(4/20). The certification totals are almost certainly inflated by resubmissions, so take them with a grain of salt.

To read the complete lot description, see:
1871-CC $20 AU58 NGC. Variety 1-A. The second 1 in...(https://coins.ha.com/itm/liberty-double-eagles/1871-cc-20-au58-ngc-variety-1-a/p/1316-36010.s)