Building a Classic Head Gold Collection, Part 2, The 1834 Plain 4 Half Eagle

BillJones

1834 Plain 4 Half Eagle

Mintage By far the greater part of 657,460 pieces
Estimated Number of Survivors 1,750
The 1834, Plain 4 half eagle is the most common coin in the Classic Head half eagle set. A hefty mintage plus the tendency to save “the first of its kind” are the main reasons for this coin’s availability.
Citizens turned in large numbers of the “old tenor gold” pieces to be converted into the new coinage. The financial motivation was simple. If you turned in 15 of the old five dollar gold coins, you received 16 of the new five dollar gold coins in return. The incentive was further advanced by the fact that these coins contained slightly less than five dollars worth of gold at the time. Although some people might not have appreciated that at the time, that helped to keep these coins in circulation because there was no incentive to hoard or melt them
The coin displayed above is accurately graded as an MS-61.

I bought this piece in the mid 1990s when I was dealer. It replaced the frist Classic Head gold piece I had purchased back in the late 1960s. I compared to some PCGS graded MS-61 examples, and the grading was really quite similar.

jonruns

Congratulations on your accomplishment...the Classic Head design is one of my favorites!!

ricko

Nice coin with an interesting die crack.....Cheers, RickO