1911-D $5 Indian Head Half Eagle NGC MS62

1911-D $5 Indian Head Half Eagle NGC MS62--$12,200.00 "Great rarity" "Registry"

      We at AUCM are pleased to offer for your consideration a true rarity in the $5 Indian half eagle series (1908-1929). This would be perfect for addition into a type set of exclusive U.S. gold coins. The 1911-D has the second lowest mintage of the $5 Indian series. Thus the small mintage of 72,500 makes this issue rare in all grades. Most of them were put into circulation, making mint state examples difficult to find. 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."

      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."