1908-S $5 Indian Head Half Eagle NGC MS64+

Rare and beautiful specimen from the first year of this popular series!

First year examples are greatly desired by collectors and specialists alike, especially when they are in a better grade such as this MS64+!

This issue has the third lowest mintage of the entire series with the 82,000 pieces that were struck at the ‘Granite Lady,’ as the Second San Francisco Mint is famously known. Take a look at the images of this coin, with its frosty surfaces and stunning design. The 1908-S $5 Indian is known for strong, brilliant strikes. NGC has graded 5 as MS64+ with 39 finer.

Portrait of Bela Pratt (1918) by Howard E. Smith. Pratt was the artist-medalist who crafted this unique and beautiful coin. Image: wikipedia.

Noted numismatic scholar and art critic Cornelius Vermeule writes, "Bela Lyon Pratt of Boston presented a novel coin.... an Indian brave in war bonnet adorns the obverse, and [a] Ptolemaic eagle with wings closed walks along on the reverse...The innovations [on this coin were] of technique as much as design. Instead of being modeled in relief within a protecting rim, the Indian, the eagle, and the lettering were sunken in incuse or engraved in the uniformly flat plane of the coin .... the [coin shows] more imagination and daring of design than almost any other issue in American history."