1911-D $2.50 Indian Head Quarter Eagle, NGC AU58 - Famous Key Date of Series

David Hall writes, "This is the key date to the $2.5 Indian series and is one of the more famous key dates of the 20th century .... The 1911-D has an original mintage of only 55,680 coins. The next lowest mintage is the 1914 with 240,000 minted and average mintages for $2.5 Indians is in the 400,000 to 500,000 range. So the low mintage of the 1911-D certainly was easy to notice." Gold enthusiasts (as well as key date enthusiasts) should carefully study this listing.

One day, shortly after Bela Lyon Pratt (1867-1916) celebrated his 5th birthday, the family physician was at the Pratt home. On the stand were small models of a cat, dog, horse, a deer and some other animals. Noticing them, the doctor picked them up and exclaimed, “Who made these?” Bela’s mother impatiently blurted out, “Bela pinches them out of beeswax. I can’t keep a bit of wax in my work basket. He always plays with it.”

“Why, don’t you realize that child is a genius? He is a born sculptor!” declared the doctor to Pratt’s astonished mother. It was a few decade later, in 1907-1908, that he designed one of our most beautiful coins.

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] was one 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."