1854 $3 Indian Princess Three Dollar NGC AU58

Numismatists simply love the "Indian princess" design on gold coins. If you are putting together a set of U.S. gold, you simply need to have an "Indian princess" among them. Here’s the perfect example to include in your collection. Please take a look at the photos provided. NGC has graded 1,378 as AU58 with 932 finer. Collector’s Universe prices this issue at $2,500.00 in AU58.

19th-century example of a cigar store Indian from Seattle, Washington. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The design upon the gold $3 gold piece obverse presents a head representing an Indian princess with her hair tightly curling upon her neck, her head adorned with a ring of feathers encircled with a band inscribed LIBERTY. Upon the field of the reverse is found a wreath of tobacco, wheat, corn, and cotton.

Numismatic art scholar Cornelius Vermeule writes, "The 'princess'... is a banknote engraver's elegant version of folk art of the 1850s. The plumes or feathers are more like the crest of the Prince of Wales than anything that saw the Western frontiers, save perhaps on a music hall beauty. Iconographically this type of Indian maiden had occurred in American and 'primitive' paintings for many years past. The figureheads of ships and the sculptures before tobacconists' shops sported faces, tresses, and bonnets of this type."