The coins of Moffat and Co. struck between 1849 and 1852 were renowned at the time for their high quality and strict adherence to an acceptable weight and fineness, but no one at that time or now would have sung the praises of their aesthetic quality. Their consistency earned them the government contract as the U.S. Assay Office of Gold in early 1852. The renderings of the design were competent but not beautiful, and today most coins bearing the imprint of Moffat and Co. show circulation and the usual imperfections associated with commercial use. The conventional wisdom states that no numismatist would have saved these pieces at the time, and any high-grade specimens would have survived only through a series of chance occurrences to the present day.

A single numismatist saved specimens of territorial gold issues, and he even went so far as to have special Proof examples produced for his collection, unique examples that represented the very finest product a frontier minter could manufacture. The numismatist in question was a frontier minter himself; his name was Augustus Humbert, and the specimen 1852 Moffat & Co. $10 piece we sold in 2006 was his (pictured the the left). Most of Humbert's collection eventually found its way to the Garrett Collection, after Captain Andrew Zabriskie's en block purchase following Humbert's death. Humbert's specially made Proof or specimen strikes were a sensation at the time of the 1980 Garrett auction, each being unique or nearly so and in a remarkable state of preservation.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the Old West & Franklinton Collections, where it realized $948,750.