1896 $5 Liberty Head Half Eagle PCGS MS64 (CAC)

Here's an attractive piece to add to your collection at an affordable price. It has a lower mintage of 58,960 and could be a type coin, or if you wish to build a set of $5 Liberty head half eagles, they were the only U.S. coin to be struck at every one of our mints (Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans, Denver, Dahlonega, Charlotte, and Carson City). PCGS has graded 46 as MS64 with only 18 finer. In CAC, there are 18 in MS64 with just 4 finer.

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, Pythagoras or The Earth is Round, c. 1800.

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."