Owner Comments:
Acquired this coin in October 2014 from a private online seller, and there was no return allowed: riskiest coin I ever purchased.
This seller had all sorts of things for sale on Ebay, which seemed to give him a legitimate presence, and he alleviated my apprehensions by telling me that my credit card company would refund my payment if the whole thing went awry, because of their protection guarantee. The coin was discounted enough that I decided to take a chance… and I hoped for the best.
At the time, I was a novice to my collection objectives (at least one coin from each decade/each mint) and I had hamstrung available coin selection for the 1840 and 1850 decades by previously acquiring an 1862 Type 3 gold dollar — for the 1860s decade Civil War coin — and an 1857 S $2.5 Coronet Head — for the San Francisco Mint.
Suddenly, I realized that I had overlooked the 1840s decade, had overlooked the fact that Charlotte, Dahlonega, and New Orleans were still absent from the mints, and I was faced with needing two gold dollars — a Type 1 and a Type 2 — and a $3 Indian Princess Head. Extremely subtle logic constrained my efforts: each of these three coins had to have mint marks that were different from the other two. Charlotte never minted a $3 Indian Princess Head and if Dahlonega were chosen for it, a nice one would cost around $50K. Interpretation: New Orleans would have to be the $3 Indian Princess Head. This left Charlotte and Dahlonega for the two types of gold dollars.
I studied the Official Red Book and quickly realized that 1855 was the only year these two remaining mints produced Type 2 gold dollars, and an 1855 Dahlonega in any decent grade would cost a fortune. This forced my decision to acquire an 1849 D Type 1 gold dollar — from the "returns not accepted" risky private seller — because its affordability and availability made "collection sense." (As luck would have it, no two dates of these three coins would be identical, too… a miracle!)
The coin came in (whew!) but, although it was clean in that there were no undue scratches, nonetheless, it had a few issues. In its NGC holder on the obverse side, just left of Liberty's bust, was a fiber… and on the reverse side, grime was seen in the lettering of UNITED STATES and the interior of the D mintmark.
I sent it off to NCS for conservation, and it was then to continue on to NGC for Scratch-Resistant reholdering. When the coin came back to me, the fiber had been removed, but the grime still remained on the reverse side. I sent it back to NCS yet again. When it came back the second time it was gorgeous in the Scratch-Resistant new holder, and it had upgraded, slightly, from AU 58 to AU 58+.
It is the collection's only Dahlonega coin, it satisfies the 1840s decade, and it is a first year of issue Type 1 gold dollar!
A triple win for this very difficult coin... could not be more pleased!