#halfeagle

It is unsurprising that $20 Libs and $10 gold eagles receive far more publicity and adoration than their smaller denomination cousins, the $5 half eagle and the $2.50 quarter eagle. (You can certainly count me among the guilty!) After all, the latter two coins are smaller and thus contain less gold--though their 90% gold purity is equivalent to the former two. However, from a numismatic standpoint, these coins are just as intriguing and offer a diversity of collecting opportunities.

Part I: Historical Overview

The quarter eagle and half eagle denomination gold coins were introduced by the United States Mint in 1796. In 1839, Chief Engraver Christian Gobrecht's Liberty Head design debuted on the half eagle. It was also adapted for the quarter eagle the following year. This design was preceded by the Liberty Cap, Turban Head, and Classic Head versions on both denominations. The Liberty Head motif is alternately known as the Coronet Head because of the tiara (or coronet) on the bust's head inscribed with "LIBERTY."

A fairly sharp 1855-O Half Eagle, possibly About Uncirculated

Compared to previous depictions of Miss Liberty on American coins, Gobrecht's new design of a left-facing bust was a more slender and petite representation. Her hair is held neatly in a bun by a string of beads as two curly locks hang down her neck. The slope of her neck and the contour of her jawline also seem more elegant than her predecessors. She is surrounded by thirteen evenly spaced six-pointed stars. The whole design is squarely within the artistic milieu of Neoclassicism, the revival of classical Greek and Roman styles that became very popular during the nineteenth century.

Neoclassical style fit hand-in-glove with the Mint's desire to standardize the appearance of U.S. coins. Maintaining the same Greco-Roman style on the varying designs for different denomination coins gave American coinage a more uniform character.

While the half eagle did undergo slight alterations during its 70 years of production (1839-1908), the quarter eagle remained unchanged for the entirety of its 68-year lifespan (1840-1907). This has only just recently (in 2014) been surpassed by the Roosevelt dime for the longest running unaltered design in the history of U.S. coinage.

Both coins were struck at the U.S. Mint headquarters in Philadelphia, as well as the branch mints in San Francisco and New Orleans. Two short-lived branches in the South also produced half eagles and quarter eagles: the Charlotte Mint in North Carolina, and the Dahlonega Mint in Georgia. (Dahlonega is a Cherokee word that felicitously means "yellow money.") The $5 half eagle is the only U.S. coin to be struck at 7 different mints, when the branches in Carson City and Denver are included.

Before going any further into $2.50 quarter eagles and $5 Libs, we should take a moment to consider how gold coins circulated in nineteenth-century America. (Much thanks to Doug Winter for covering this in his books.) This will be germane to discussing how to collect these coins--coming up in Part II: Key Characteristics--but properly belongs to their historical discussion.

For much of the 1800s, commerce was primarily conducted through promissory notes. Because the Act of Congress authorizing the creation of the U.S. Mint passed in 1792 had set the ratio of gold-to-silver values at 15:1, below the world standard of about 16:1, American gold coins were worth more as bullion than as legal tender. Consequently, people hoarded gold coins rather than spending them. A wide variety of different banknotes circulated around the country, and gold specie often ended up sitting in bank vaults. They were most commonly used for payments of foreign debt, not commercial business. In fact, many of the gold coins that did circulate in the States were brought by immigrants from Europe. Winter concludes,

" . . . it seems that, when cash was used in commerce, paper money was much more common than gold. Prior to the California Gold Rush, there wasn't much gold in the country, and most of what was there was in foreign coins. In the 1850s, it appears that in cities, gold primarily journeyed between the Customs House and the bank . . . [G]old coins, outside of the West, primarily served as bank reserves and to pay for international transactions."

(Douglas Winter, Gold Coins of the New Orleans Mint, 1839-1909. 2nded., Zyrus Press, 2006, p. 32.)

So, quarter and half eagles did not circulate extensively between citizens. Yet, as unprecedented quantities of gold were being mined in California in the 1850s, travelers across the West found it advantageous to hold gold coins rather than banknotes, which could less reliably be exchanged for their full value outside of their state of issue. By contrast, gold was gold, and was worth the same irrespective of location.

A great deal of U.S. gold coins ended up overseas, and remained in Europe for over a century. Many gold coins were simply remelted. Nonetheless, when they were occasionally used for commerce, quarter eagles circulated more than half eagles. $5 half eagles were instead a popular Christmas gift to place in children's stockings.