1847 $5 Liberty Head Half Eagle NGC MS64

We are proud to offer a great rarity from America's storied past. This 1847 $5 Liberty Head half eagle is preserved in choice mint state--fresh from the day it was minted in Philadelphia over 270 years ago. This is the kind of specimen found only in the finest collections of U.S. gold. If you would like to develop a type set collection of such rare gold coins, please reach out to AUCM for professional guidance.

      At the time the design was crafted for this $5 Liberty Head half eagle, the art world was firmly in the grasp of Neoclassicism. For Neoclassical sculptors and die engravers, contemporary garb and hair styles were too fleeting, and portraying figures on coins in such a manner could inspire criticism. Therefore they fashioned their subjects in classical attire and took inspiration from stylized busts of known works by ancient sculptors and their later copyists. Neoclassicism relished cold profiles, and the precise art of die sinking is quite suited to such an influence.

      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."