1834 $2.50 Classic Head Quarter Eagle NGC AU58

     It had been decades since gold and silver coins could circulate on equal footing, an imbalance that forced gold coins into a non-circulating role while American commerce was conducted with paper money, U.S. silver coins, and mostly worn-out foreign silver coins. The Coinage Act of June 28, 1834 diminished the weight standard for the new quarter eagle to "fifty-eight grains pure gold, and sixty-four and a half grains of standard (i.e. alloyed) gold," the quarter eagle's intrinsic value in gold was, at last, the same as the value of two and a half dollars in American silver coins.

     The mintage of the 1834 Classic Head quarter eagle is 27 times greater than the mintage of 1833 old tenor quarter eagles, but rather than being exported or serving as bullion deposits in banks, the new coins actually circulated. Newspapers across the country excitedly reported seeing the new coins for the first time, publishing updates on mintage figures and hopeful editorials on what the "Gold Coinage Act" would mean for the American economy. Referred to by some as "Jackson Gold," the new tenor coins started appearing beyond Philadelphia in the late summer of 1834. Throughout autumn, more than $200,000 worth of gold coins were struck per week, consisting entirely of quarter eagles and half eagles, while the citizenry worried that too much of it was going to the banks and not enough into the pockets of common folk. Of course, the Mint delivered coined gold to those who deposited gold for coining, and most depositors were banks. Much of the gold deposited by the banks was pre-1834 products of the United States Mint, for which the Mint paid a premium, guaranteeing the rarity of those coins for modern collectors. "Old coinage, now in existence, will pass thus....the quarter eagle, $2.66 3/4, this being the true value of the pure gold," reported The Knickerbocker: Or, New York Monthly Magazine as new tenor gold coins started to appear in New York in August 1834.