A large number of 1851 $20 double eagles were minted this year in Philadelphia due to a large influx of newly mined precious metal from California. Strictly by mintage numbers, it is the most common $20 gold coin from the 1850s. Overall, the 1851 double eagle is well struck. In Very Fine and Extremely Fine condition, examples can be found with little effort, though AU survivors prove to be surprisingly elusive for such a liberal mintage. Mint State pieces are very scarce with perhaps 60-80 examples known, and no pieces grading finer than MS-64.

We wrote the following in our August 2010 Auction Catalog, saying: "The highest-mintage Double Eagle dated prior to 1861, the 1851 is actually scarcer in numismatic circles than this fact might suggest. It is not even the second most plentiful P-mint Double Eagle of the Type I design, as the 1850, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1860 and 1861 are all rarer than the 1851 in an absolute sense. Mint State coins are very rare and the Condition Census for this issue begins at the MS-63 level (per Doug Winter and Adam Crum, An Insider's Guide to Collecting Type I Double Eagles, 2002)."

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in August 2010, where it realized $34,500. It is pedigreed to the Horseshoe Collection.