1877 G$1 Indian Princess Gold Dollar PCGS MS64

Here’s a beautiful little treasure to add to your collection. Buy this coin and you will cherish it for many years to come. This issue had a mintage of only 3,900. PCGS has graded 22 as MS64 with 37 finer. Collector’s Universe gives this issue a price of $3,000.00 in MS64.

James B. Longacre, who designed and engraved the beautiful Indian Princess gold coin series. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

After many years of presenting Liberty heads derivative of classical Rome and Greece upon our coinage, here is one that is quintessentially American. Chief Engraver James B. Longacre was given the opportunity to craft his own vision of American Liberty, and he turned to the American Indian, the first people of our great land, for inspiration. He wrote:

Why should we in seeking a type for the illustration or symbol of a nation that need not hold itself lower than the Roman virtue or the Science of Greece prefer the ... period of a remote and distant people, from which to draw an emblem of nationality: to the aboriginal period of our own land: especially when the latter presents us with a characteristic distinction not less interesting, and more peculiar than that which still casts its chain over the civilized portion of the older continent? Why not be American from the spring-head within our own domain? ... From the copper shores of Lake Superior to the silver mountains of Potosi, from the Ojibwa to the Araucanian, the feathered tiara is a characteristic of the primitiveness of our hemisphere as the turban is of the Asiatic.