1846 $5 Liberty Head Half Eagle, Large Date NGC MS63

      A coin such as this 1846 $5 Liberty Head half eagle, Large Date, is rarely offered for consideration. Such elusive specimens are found only in the finest numismatic collections. This example would the perfect addition to a type set of simply the most important U.S. gold coinage from the Early Federal period up to 1933, the watershed year that saw gold coinage vanish from the American numismatic  landscape. For expert assistance on creating such a set of great gold rarities, please reach out to AUCM.

      Discussing the design found upon the Liberty Head half eagle, numismatic scholar and art critic Cornelius Vermeule writes, "Gobrecht executed new designs (1838) for the $10 denomination in gold, a coin known as an eagle. The bust of Liberty with an inscribed coronet in her hair that graced the obverse was to remain on the gold coinage until 1908. The reverse differed little from the design in use since 1807 on the $5 gold piece save that the wings of the eagle spread from one edge of the coin to the other. On the $5 gold piece, or half eagle ... this sober yet young and sympathetic head of Liberty was to vary only in details of tresses on the neck or strands of pearls in the bun on the back of the head."

      Commenting upon the inspiration for Gobrecht's Liberty, 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, Phythagoras 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."