1898 Liberty Head $2 1/2 1840-1907 MS66

History

Christian Gobrecht's Liberty Head portrait, also called the Coronet type, replaced William Kneass's Classic Head on the quarter eagle in 1840, arriving after the same design had been introduced on the ten dollar eagle in 1838 and the half eagle in 1839 as part of the Mint's move toward a uniform Liberty across the gold denominations. The quarter eagle had already passed through six design changes before Gobrecht's, none of them lasting more than eight years and the Classic Head only six. The Coronet type then ran without major alteration from 1840 through 1907, a span of 68 years that was the longest for any American coin design until the Roosevelt dime surpassed it in 2015. Philadelphia struck quarter eagles in every year of that run, and 1898 is one of the Philadelphia-only dates with no branch mint counterpart.

Details

Gobrecht designed the obverse, while the heraldic eagle reverse descends from John Reich's earlier eagle work and was reworked for the 1840-1907 type. The coins were struck in an alloy of 90 percent gold and 10 percent copper, weighing 4.18 grams, or 64.50 grains, on an 18 millimeter planchet with a reeded edge. The 1898 issue came from Philadelphia and carries no mintmark, and 165 proofs were struck for the year. Across the full 1840-1907 series, output reached 11,921,171 business strikes and an estimated 4,232 proofs.

Features

Liberty faces left on the obverse in a wide coronet inscribed LIBERTY, her hair gathered into a bun secured by a string of beads, with thirteen stars for the original colonies encircling the head and the date below. The reverse shows a heraldic eagle with wings spread to the rims, a Union shield on its breast, an olive branch in one claw and three arrows in the other, a pairing the hobby literature reads as peaceful intent alongside military preparedness. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA surrounds the eagle, with the denomination 2 1/2 D. beneath it. Unlike most contemporary federal coinage, this type omits E PLURIBUS UNUM, so the legend and the denomination account for all the lettering on the reverse.

Notable facts

• PCGS CoinFacts places the 1898 mid-pack among the 1890s quarter eagles, scarcer than 1897 but far more available than 1892 or 1894.
• David Akers, writing in 1975 and again in 1988, called the date moderately scarce and underrated and argued it is rarer as a date than the popular 1911-D, while granting that the 1911-D is much rarer in Uncirculated grades.
• Roughly 100 of the 165 proofs struck are believed to survive, a figure that makes the issue one of the more frequently offered proofs of the type.
• A proof 1898 quarter eagle brought $55,812 in a March 2014 Baltimore auction.
• The Pittman Act of 1918 applied only to silver dollars and had no effect on gold quarter eagles.
• On mintmarked dates of this type the mintmark appears on the lower reverse below the eagle, a position that leaves the Philadelphia 1898 without one.