1914 $5 Indian Head Half Eagle NGC MS64 (CAC)

      It is with great pleasure that we offer this stunning example of the 1914 $5 Indian Head half eagle, graded MS64 by NGC, for your consideration. A rare coin, this example would be right at home in a type set of the finest U.S. gold coins. David Akers writes, "The 1914 is very similar in overall rarity to the other Philadelphia Mint issues from 1909 to 1913 .... In MS-64 or higher, the 1914 is certainly rare ... The 1914 is almost always sharply struck ... Lustre for this issue is well above average ... and the color is generally excellent, typically a rich orange and greenish gold or a medium coppery gold."

      The mint director at the time of the concept and creation of this beautiful coin was Frank Leach, who wrote in his memoir:

Originally it was the intention to give the $5 and $2.50 pieces the same design as that used on the double eagle or $20 piece, but before final action to that end was taken President Roosevelt invited me to lunch with him at the White House. His purpose was to have me meet Doctor William Sturgis Bigelow of Boston, a lover of art and friend of the President, who was showing great interest in the undertaking for improving the appearance of American coins, and who had a new design for the smaller gold coins. It was his idea that the commercial needs of the country required coins that would "stack" evenly, and that the preservation of as much as possible of the flat plane of the piece was desirable. A coin, therefore, with the lines of the design, figures, and letters depressed or incused, instead of being raised or in relief, would meet the wishes of the bankers and business men, and at the same time introduce a novelty in coinage that was artistic as well as adaptable to the needs of business.

      The new $5 Indian Head half eagle (as well as the $2.50 Indian Head quarter eagle) was designed and engraved by Bela Lyon Pratt, of whom 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."