THREE DOLLAR gold coins have always been something of an oddity to collectors. Due to their relatively high value, they were not all that strongly collected until modern times. Most numismatists even today, however, opt for just a type coin.
Although the first three-dollar piece was not issued until 1854 there was an even earlier suggestion for such a coin. On June 30, 1832, Representative Campbell White introduced a bill into Congress which, among other things, called for the coinage of a three-dollar gold piece. The Mint was to strike “gold coins of the value of three dollars, to contain sixty-seven and a half grains of pure gold, and seventy-five grains of standard gold.” Oddly enough, the bill did not call for a quarter eagle but rather a two-dollar piece.
This first attempt at a three-dollar coin fell prey to adverse lobbying by Mint Director Samuel Moore who did not like either the two- or three-dollar ideas. In due course, with Moore’s active involvement, changes were made to the coinage laws affecting gold in June 1834 and again in January 1837 but the denominations created in 1792 were not altered.
From 1837 until the late 1840s there was little thought of revisions to the monetary system but the 1848 discovery of gold in California was to change everything. The sudden abundance of gold meant that silver was now undervalued, resulting in bullion dealers buying up all of
