Two Proof Gold $5 Half Eagles Are Among the Exciting Lots at Stack's Bowers Galleries' Aug. 13 Rarities Night Auction

Making a quick return to the auction block after selling for $630,000 at Heritage’s January 2023 Florida United Numismatists sale is an 1825/4/1 Capped Head Left gold half eagle graded Proof 62 by Professional Coin Grading Service from the Harry W. Bass collection.

Two Proof gold $5 half eagles are among the exciting lots at Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ Aug. 13 Rarities Night auction, with lot viewing at the ANA World’s Fair of Money, Aug. 4 to 9.

Making a quick return to the auction block after selling for $630,000 at Heritage’s January 2023 Florida United Numismatists sale is an 1825/4/1 Capped Head Left gold half eagle graded Proof 62 by Professional Coin Grading Service from the Harry W. Bass collection. On long-term display at the ANA’s Money Museum at its Colorado Springs headquarters, it is the third-known example of the famed early U.S. Proof gold issue and was struck during a period where the striking of Proof coinage was largely not recorded at the Philadelphia Mint.

The three known examples are struck from the same die pair, listed as JD-1 in John W. Dannreuther’s recent book on Proof gold coins, and the dramatic overdate provides visual evidence of the re-use of dies during this time period, though modern scholarship suggests the 1 underdigit is likely a partially effaced 4.

Produced as a one-sided Proof, the obverse was struck from a polished die with reflective fields and even a bit of cameo contrast.

Only a dozen or so Proofs exist for this type from 1820 to 1829. Heritage’s 2023 offering observed, “Microscopic obverse hairlines, perhaps remaining from the planchet preparation, limit the grade,” before calling it “affordable” (at least relative to the finest-known example, one graded Proof 67 Cameo by PCGS with a green Certified Acceptance Corp. sticker that sold for $4,080,000 at an August 2022 Stack’s Bowers sale).

Early Proof gold pieces are coveted, as are pattern coins struck in gold, like a unique 1878 gold $5 half eagle pattern listed as Judd-1570 in the pattern reference and graded Proof 65+ Cameo by PCGS with a green CAC sticker. It also was offered relatively recently, selling for $456,000 at Heritage’s April 23, 2021, Central States Numismatic Society convention auction.

The design is attributed to George T. Morgan and was not used on regular issue coins. It features a thinner planchet and larger diameter than regular issue gold $5 half eagles — measuring 25.5 millimeters rather than 21.6 millimeters — and this was part of an anti-counterfeiting proposal for a largely theoretical problem, in case ne’er-do-wells might hollow out coins, removing the interior gold, and replacing it with platinum, a less valuable metal at the time. However, such prohibitively thin gold coins were challenging to produce and never went into regular production. The offered Proof example shows some striking softness on Liberty’s ear and the eagle’s central breast feathers. The offered pattern, “is identifiable by a thin, faint, staccato-like hairline in the lower left reverse field, slanting up from the border toward the eagle’s right wing.”

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