1911-D $5 Indian Head Half Eagle NGC MS62

The semi-key 1911-D has the second lowest mintage of the entire $5 Indian series. Therefore, the small mintage of 72,500 makes this issue rare in all grades. The vast majority of them were put into circulation, making mint state examples elusive. NGC has graded 58 as MS62 with only 32 finer. Collectors Universe gives this issue a price of $17,500 in MS62.

Gold expert David Akers tells us, "The 1911-D is always well struck with a well-defined and fairly bold mintmark....Overall, the relatively few Mint State examples of this issue look very much like the quarter eagles of the same date and mint. Color is typically a light to medium orange gold, sometimes with a greenish or greenish yellow tint."

Bela Lyon Pratt, the artist-engraver who crafted this beautiful coin.

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."