Quarter Eagle - Used by Few, Collected by many!
Early on the Quarter Eagle was not a very widely used coin. It went mostly unwanted by anyone at least in the beginning. At the start of the 19th Century $2.50 represented a whole week's wages for most people if they were lucky. Due to this, most of these coins never made it into circulation. When these
low mintage and very rare gold coins were bought by banks they mostly sat in vaults for years just to have gold on hand.
This denomination saw little in the way of use in day to day commerce. However, as the years went by and the hobby of numismatics
took shape they gained in popularity and now present a challenge for thousands of coin collectors.
My particular favorite in this denomination is the Indian series. They are the last $2.50 gold coins to be minted and have an incuse
design. Wear is a little more difficult to detect on this series due to the design though. These coins were minted from 1908 to 1929 with a break between 1915 and 1925. The series only has 15 coins to make a complete set with most of them fairly easy to obtain in reasonably high grades. If you are interested
in US Gold coins and want to start a gold coin collection this would be a great place for anyone to begin.
The U.S. Mint made eight distinct designs. They are listed as follows.
Capped Bust Type Right no Stars (1796 only)
Capped Bust Type Right Stars (1796-1807)
Capped Bust Type Left Large (1808 only)
Capped Head Type Left (1821-1827)
Capped Head Type Left Reduced (1829-1834)
Classic Head Type (1834-1839)
Liberty Head Type (1840-1907)
