As any numismatist will tell you, the world is full of rare coins most people haven’t heard about, but now one of them is going to be auctioned and it’s making headlines. The coin we’re speaking about is a $4 coin and according to estimations it could sell for no less than $60,000.

The story behind this particular coin is quite interesting. Back in 1879, a man named John Adam Kasson who was America’s minister plenipotentiary to Austria, somehow managed to convince the Philadelphia Mint that the United States just had to have a four-dollar coin. Nobody knows exactly why.

It was suggested these coins were first minted as ‘universal coins’ (exchangeable with any other leading currency such as the British sovereign or the French napoleon), which could eventually become part of the Latin Monetary Union.

The $4 coin that was created is commonly known as ‘Stella’, referring to the woman it displays. In fact, there are two Stella designs: Coiled hair (where the woman has her hair up), which was designed by George T. Morgan and flowing hair (where the woman has her hair down), which was designed by Charles E. Barber.

Only 425 of the Stella coins were actually minted, and sold at cost. The coin did not become popular and the congress refused to approve a wider release of the coins.

On September 6^th though one of these coins is scheduled to be auctioned at Bonham’s LA. According to estimations it will fetch between $50,000 and $60,000. This is, of course, a lot of cash, but it’s far from the highest price ever paid for a single coin. Recently a single penny was sold for $1.2 million, in 2013, a single silver dollar was purchased for over $10 million and over a decade, a $20 gold piece was bought for the whopping sum of $7.6 million. It is also interesting to note that different ‘Stellas’ have different prices. Three years ago a 1980 ‘hair-up’ Stella, which is the rarer of the two versions, was sold for $2.6 million and in the very same auction a 1879 Stella was sold for more than $1 million.

Why are estimations so significantly lower in this case? It seems that the coin has wear to its surface, which means you can buy it for a “bargain” price.

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