1927-D 25C Standing Liberty Quarter PCGS MS64 (CAC)

Here’s an attractive example of Hermon Atkins MacNeil’s classic design at a more affordable price. Giving it more cachet is its appearance in an older PCGS holder and the desirable and valuable green CAC sticker. PCGS has graded 593 as MS64 with 400 finer. In CAC, there are 37 in Ms64 with 91 finer. CAC gives this issue a price of $625.00 in MS64.

NGC Coin Explorer writes, “This is one of only three entries in the Standing Liberty series having a mintage under one million [976,400]. The great availability of Mint State 1926-D quarters even today suggests that the demand for additional pieces in 1927 was low enough to prompt this [smaller] production.”

Inspiration or imitation? Victor D. Brenner's 1909 Art Institute of Chicago Norman Wait Harris Prize medal (above, photo: American Numismatic Society) and Hermon A. MacNeil's 1916 Standing Liberty quarter (photo: Wikimedia Commons).

It could be argued that Hermon Atkins MacNeil borrowed heavily from available models created by other numismatic artists in order to craft his Standing Liberty design. The most striking example is the parapet and female figure upon a medal designed by Victor D. Brenner in 1909: the Norman Wait Harris Prize medal, which was issued by the Art Institute of Chicago.

Barbara A. Baxter, who penned the exhibit catalog, Beaux-Arts Medal in America, wrote that the Standing Liberty quarter is "based on the obverse" of that medal, and that the "palette and brushes of Brenner's female personification have been replaced with patriotic iconography, and the classical parapet is now decorated with thirteen stars and bears the motto 'In God We Trust.'"