1844-O $10 Liberty Head Eagle PCGS VF35

Here's an affordable Antebellum artifact from the historic New Orleans Mint, one that would serve well as a gold type coin. Doug Winter writes, "The 1844-O is one of three New Orleans eagles from the 1840s with a mintage of over 100,000. It is among the more common issues from this decade but it is a very rare coin in higher grades." PCGS has graded 21 in VF35 with 218 finer.

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin's Pythagoras or The Earth is Round (c. 1800).

Discussing the design found upon the obverse of the Liberty Head eagle, numismatic scholar and art critic Cornelius Vermeule writes, "The motivation for this Roman head of Liberty stems from vast, varied neoclassicism of the Napoleonic era. Typical of the source is a small painting ... by Jacques-Louis David's contemporary Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, Pythagoras or The Earth is Round, painted about 1800 .... [On the painting it] is the diademed or coroneted, white-robed, seated female that should attract our attention, for she is related to the heads of Liberty on our 19th century gold ... coinage."