The 1863-S $20 double eagle is usually softly struck across the most intricate regions of the obverse. Most higher-grade pieces known today were brought to the market after they were recovered in the 1990s from the 1865 shipwreck of the S.S. Brother Jonathan. These shipwreck pieces tend to have nice and frosty luster, while non-shipwreck coins of this San Francisco mint issue often exhibit more grainy luster. Just about 300 1863-S $20s were recovered from the wrecks of the SS Republic and the SS Brother Jonathan combined, making this issue readily available in all circulated grades up through Choice AU– which tend to appear at auction roughly a dozen times per year. Mint State coins are scarce, with over 100 examples thought to exist in the market, the finest of which are MS-64.

We wrote the following in our April 2022 Auction Catalog, saying: "The mintage for the 1863-S double eagle is 966,570 pieces, a substantial production figure for the Civil War era. This issue circulated extensively in West Coast commerce at a time when specie had virtually disappeared from day-to-day transactions in the Midwest and the East. Although many were likely exported overseas in later years, survival rates are comparable to most other double eagle issues from the early to mid 1860s. Q David Bowers estimated an Uncirculated population of 30 to 50 different pieces in his 2004 Guide Book of Double Eagles. David W. Akers enumerated 15 listings of examples cataloged as Uncirculated in his 1982 study of double eagle auction records. All bets were off when Odyssey Marine Exploration later discovered the lost wreck of the S.S. Republic, which yielded a further 175 pieces. As treasure-found twenties typically do, these soon found their way into collections and, today, market appearances for Mint State examples are few and far between. One subgroup of Mint State 1863-S double eagles has remained exceedingly rare: non-shipwreck coins that owe their existence to repatriations from foreign bank hoards or other sources."

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in April 2022 as part of the Fairmont Collection, Hendricks Set, where it realized $45,600.