1843-O $5 Liberty Head Half Eagle, Large Letters PCGS MS62 (CAC)

This coin was last traded publicly in the Morgan Collection of Branch Mint Gold featured in the Americana Sale conducted by Stacks in 2007. Certified as MS62 by NGC seventeen years ago, it brought $18,400 - a new record price for the grade. Here's a quote from the Stacks catalog, lot #5119:

1843-O Large Letters. MS-62 (NGC). A beautiful coin which retains the frost imparted by the dies on Liberty's head and neck. The surfaces are pleasing with scattered handling nicks and a shallow trio of ticks below Liberty's chin. On the reverse, the lustre survives although the fields show minor evidence of handling in the form of a few random lines and bagmarks. Rather well struck for this later die state. A total of 19,075 were struck, apparently using a single obverse die paired with two reverses. The Small Letters, Small O Mintmark was used first, then replaced with the reverse to coin this example. The obverse shows several thin die cracks, most of the stars are connected to the rim by cracks, another through the 1 to Liberty's bust, star 6 has a crack to the leading curl above Liberty's forehead, and star 12 has a horizontal crack to Liberty's curl on her neck. The reverse too is cracked with encircling cracks through the legend, extensive die lapping has weakened most of the letters, and two radial cracks are found, one through the N of UNITED, another through the bullet or stop past AMERICA.
NGC Census: 2; 11 finer (finest MS-65).
Provenance: From the Morgan Collection of Branch Mint Gold.