1908 $10 Indian Head Eagle, with Motto PCGS MS62

Here's the perfect type coin at an affordable price. Plus it is the first year that this issue carried the motto IN GOD WE TRUST. President Theodore Roosevelt felt that it was immoral to put the name of God upon our nation's coinage. However, Congress did not agree and the latter part of 1908 saw the motto placed on both $10 eagles and $20 double eagles. PCGS has awarded the grade of MS62 to 2,052 examples, with 1,792 finer.

Saint-Gaudens' model for a Liberty head cent. He later adapted it as the obverse of the $10 Eagle coin. President Roosevelt insisted on adding an Indian headdress to make the design quintessentially American.

Saint-Gaudens took inspiration from the classical figure of Nike (Victory) when he drafted initial designs for a cent piece that was not developed further. This profile of Nike, bedecked with an olive wreath, became the obverse motif for this Eagle coin. Roosevelt saw Saint-Gaudens' design for the eagle, and was not happy with it. He made his feelings known--and offered an artistic suggestion--in a letter to him dated November 14, 1905. Wrote Roosevelt, "...is it possible to make a Liberty with that Indian feather head-dress? ... Would the feather headdress be any more out of keeping with the rest of Liberty than the canonical Phyrgian cap which is never worn by any free people in the world?"