1887 $3 Indian Princess Three Dollar PCGS MS63 (CAC)

Beloved by collectors, Longacre's Indian Princess is truly an eye-catching design. The example offered by AUCM would serve as an excellent gold type coin. With its mintage of 6,000 this is a rare coin. PCGS has graded 51 as MS63, with 127 finer. In CAC there are 7 in MS63 with 21 finer. Plus it has the desirable PCGS Old Green Holder that numismatists love.

James B. Longacre's self portrait of himself as a young boy. He was the artist-engraver who crafted the beautiful Indian Princess design.

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."