1878-S $10 Liberty Head Eagle PCGS AU53 (CAC)

It is with pleasure that we at AUCM offer for consideration an 1878-S $10 Eagle, graded PCGS AU53 (CAC).Ron Guth writes, "The 1878-S $10 gold piece is a ... scarce date in circulated grades and an extreme condition-rarity in Mint State. ... This date comes well struck, often with good luster..." Heritage Auctions writes, "The 1878-S Ten Dollar was struck just a year before an explosive increase in S-mint production of Eagles. Just 26,100 pieces were minted, and it is scarce in any condition, being seldom available better than a low-end AU."

Discussing the design found upon the Liberty Head 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. 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."