1857-S $3 Indian Princess Three Dollar PCGS XF45

We here at AUCM are indeed delighted to present a relic of the aftermath of the California Gold Rush, an 1857-S $3 Indian Princess, graded PCGS XF45. The $3 Indian Princess gold coins are typically found in VF-XF grades. The year 1857 saw a plentiful supply of gold dust in the San Francisco area after the Gold Rush that started in 1848. At that time, there was still an important need for lower denomination gold coins on the West Coast. That gold dust was employed to produce the coin offered here by AUCM.

The design upon the gold $3 gold piece obverse presents a head representing an Indian princess with her hair tightly curling upon her neck, her head adorned with a ring of feathers encircled with a band inscribed LIBERTY. Upon the field of the reverse is found a wreath of tobacco, wheat, corn, and cotton. Numismatic art scholar Cornelius Vermeule writes, "The 'princess'... is a banknote engraver's elegant version of folk art of the 1850s. The plumes or feathers are more like the crest of the Prince of Wales than anything that saw the Western frontiers, save perhaps on a music hall beauty. Iconographically this type of Indian maiden had occurred in American and 'primitive' paintings for many years past. The figureheads of ships and the sculptures before tobacconists' shops sported faces, tresses, and bonnets of this type."