1881 $10 Liberty Head Eagle PCGS AU58

Here’s a great candidate for an affordable type coin to add to your collection. With a mintage of 3,877.220, there are plenty of examples available. The Liberty head $10 is a very popular series with collectors and specialists alike, and this example, in its AU58 grade, is very attractive and very collectible. PCGS has graded 793 pieces as AU58 with 7,697 finer. Collectors Universe gives this issue a price of $1,400.00 in AU58.

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, Pythagoras or The Earth is Round, c. 1800. Perhaps the “white-robed, seated female” is the inspiration for Longacre’s Liberty head design.

Discussing the design found upon the Liberty Head eagle, numismatic scholar and art critic Cornelius 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, Pythagoras 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."