1888-S $10 Liberty Head Eagle PCGS MS63

An attractive, affordable type coin in desirable Choice MS63 grade. There have been 328 graded MS63 by PCGS with just 51 finer. Plus it has the ever-popular Coroneted Liberty head design and S-mint mark from the San Francisco mint.

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."

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."

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin's Phythagoras or The Earth is Round.