1908 $10 Indian Head Eagle, with Motto PCGS MS64

Here's a great collectible to add to your collection. PCGS has graded 377 as MS64, with 173 finer. Gold specialist David Akers writes, "The 1908 With Motto is generally very sharply struck, and the lustre is typically very good to excellent. Most specimens have a satiny texture to the surface, and the color varies from rich yellow gold to medium greenish yellow gold to light orange and greenish gold."

President Roosevelt pushed Saint-Gaudens into including an Indian headdress on the eagle design. Pictured is Red Bird, a Sioux Indian, wearing one.

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. Writes 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 Phrygian cap which is never worn by any free people in the world?"

However, after seeing the new design on the eagle coin, Roosevelt was quite pleased with Saint-Gaudens. He wrote to the artist on March 14, 1907: "I am so glad you liked the head of Liberty with the feather head-dress. Really, the feather head-dress could be treated as being the conventional cap of Liberty quite as much as if it was a Phrygian cap; and, after all, it is our Liberty--not what the ancient Greeks and Romans miscalled by that title--and we are entitled to a typically American head-dress for the lady.”