Dollar’s Worth

As a coin expert, Miles Standish has examined a couple million coins over the years. On Thursday, for the first time, his hands trembled.

Standish held the world’s most valuable coin: the 1804 Eliasberg silver dollar, valued at about $2 million.

One side of the multimillion-dollar dollar has the face and flowing hair of Miss Liberty. She is bordered by 13 stars representing the original U.S. colonies.

“This is the second-prettiest girl I’ve seen all day,” Standish declared. The first? “My wife.”

Standish was one of about a dozen experts to examine the Eliasberg silver dollar Thursday at the Santa Ana offices of Professional Coin Grading Service.

The authenticity of the coin, previously part of the collection of Baltimore banker Louis E. Eliasberg Sr. has been well-established for decades.

But as the experts checked it for scratches and coloring Thursday, they issued what they said was its first official guarantee of authenticity.

The verdict: “This coin is genuine, absolutely,” said Rick Montgomery, president of the coin company. On a scale of 1 to 70, the coin was given a 65 for quality of preservation.

The coin will be on public display at the Long Beach Coin and Collectibles Expo through Saturday. The last time it went on public display was in Philadelphia in 1976.

In April, the Spectrum Numismatics coin company of Irvine bought the silver dollar for just over $1.8 million, the highest price ever paid for a single coin.

Experts said even they were surprised by the high price, an indication of the growing coin-collecting industry.

“It’s hard to believe someone would pay $1.8 million for a coin,” said Stephen Bobbitt, a spokesman for the American Numismatic Assn. “But someone did.”

The coin-collecting industry, he said, is “a billion-dollar-a-year business--even in a bad year.”

The coin was first acquired by numismatist Matthew Adams Stickney of Salem, Mass., in 1843 from the Philadelphia Mint. In exchange, he gave the mint a set of coins it didn’t own.

In a letter to a fellow coin collector in 1867, Stickney wrote that he had refused an offer of $1,000 for the coin.

The coin eventually was purchased by Eliasberg for $10,500 in 1946.

Eliasberg, who died in 1976, was the only person known to have one of every U.S. coin minted between 1794 and 1976.

Since the April auction in New York, the Eliasberg silver dollar has been resold to a private collector for about $2 million, said Spectrum president Greg Roberts, who stood in for the owner at Thursday’s ceremony. Roberts predicted that the new owner would not want to sell the coin for less than $2.5 million.

But the new owner, who remained anonymous at his request, has wanted to share the coin with the public, Roberts said.

At the end of Thursday’s ceremony, Roberts did appear a bit relieved as he was presented with the formally certified coin.

“It wasn’t counterfeit after all,” he said with a smile.

The cost of Thursday’s certification: $100, the standard price for one-day service.