1915 Indian Head $5 1908-1929 MS62

History

Theodore Roosevelt's campaign to redesign American coinage left the smaller gold denominations unfinished when Augustus Saint-Gaudens died in 1907, and the Mint turned to Boston sculptor Bela Lyon Pratt to complete them. The sunken relief that defines the series came from Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, a Boston physician and collector who had studied Egyptian reliefs at the Museum of Fine Arts and persuaded Roosevelt of the idea; Bigelow also brought Pratt into the project, and the coinage is sometimes called the Pratt-Bigelow issue. Pratt finished the designs in January 1908 and used the same obverse portrait for the quarter eagle and the half eagle. The 1915 half eagle closed out the Philadelphia Mint's original run, which spanned 1908 through 1915 before the denomination resumed there only in 1929.

Details

Bela Lyon Pratt designed both sides of the coin, which was struck in the standard alloy of .900 gold and .100 copper with a reeded edge. The Philadelphia issue carries no mint mark. San Francisco also struck half eagles in 1915, and the two are cataloged separately, the Philadelphia coin as PCGS #8530 and the branch-mint piece as #8531. The 1915 also marked the final year of the quarter eagle's first run, after which that denomination paused until 1925.

Features

The obverse shows an Indian chief facing left in a full feathered war bonnet, with LIBERTY above, six stars to the left and seven to the right, and the date below. On the reverse a standing eagle perches on a bundle of arrows intertwined with an olive branch, adapted from Saint-Gaudens' work, with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA above, E PLURIBUS UNUM at the left, IN GOD WE TRUST at the right and FIVE DOLLARS below. Every design element is recessed below the field, so the field itself is the highest surface on the coin; mint marks are the exception, appearing in raised relief to the left of the arrowheads. Typical 1915 Philadelphia pieces are very sharply struck with finely granular surfaces and strong luster, most often in greenish gold and orange, though coppery and reddish gold examples turn up.

Notable facts

• Because the field sits higher than the devices, wear and contact marks fall directly on the open field rather than on protected design elements, which makes high-grade survivors unusually difficult to locate.
• PCGS considers all Indian Head half eagles rare in full MS-65 and ranks the type as the rarest 20th century gold type by a wide margin.
• The 1915 has produced a fair number of gems and a small group of nearly perfect pieces, yet it remains scarce at MS-64 and above.
• David Akers called the 1915-S one of the major rarities of the series and of all 20th century American gold, hard to obtain even in MS-60, with only three true gems seen.
• Very few varieties are recognized across the series, and none of significance applies to the 1915 Philadelphia coin.