Despite a mintage of 71,000 pieces for the year, most of these and all double eagles of the 1850s and 1860s ended up being shipped overseas and later melted. No large hoards have been found from that overseas source, and curiously the ocean has been one of the better sources for finding groups of these prized early gold coins from long ago shipwrecks. By the 1870s the Free Silver movement was well underway and importers and exporters overseas did not want to be paid in lower value silver, so gold was in high demand for international trade. Hence the number of these 1853-O double eagles that survived is estimated at 350 to 500 pieces by various experts, Mint State coins are all prohibitively rare and the finest reported is a single Mint State-63, another single listed as Mint State-62 and a small group of three are listed as Mint State-61. Add to these this extraordinary Specimen coin and that's it for the certified high end coins known to represent this date and mint.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in August 2022 as part of the Fairmont Collection, JBR Set, where it realized $36,000.