…Mr. Kneass, whose celerity in his profession could have sufficed to furnish all the dies we have necessarily employed within the last five years. — Mint Director Samuel Moore, 1835Intact and abundant cartwheel luster covers surfaces gracefully toned with hints of olive and gold folded into the frosty medium gray patina. A nearly flawless gem, with immaculate fields and just a single tiny mark on Libertys cheekbone. The strike is definitive. Two jagged die cracks encircle the reverse, the first starting under 2 of the denomination and connecting every peripheral design element on the left side of the reverse up to E of STATES, the second joining 5 of the denomination to C and the lower two arrowheads. Not a great rarity in lower Mint State grades, but this piece is among the very finest known, tied with several others as the finest seen by PCGS.This year saw a change among Capped Bust quarters, a shift to smaller planchets and a redesigned portrait by William Kneass, a well-known Philadelphia engraver. Kneass became chief engraver of the U.S. Mint in 1824 after a long career as a plate engraver. His work includes the central devices of the Small Planchet quarters, as well as the gold designs of 1834 (copied from the work of John Reich). These designs, despite their fine execution, would be relatively short-lived, replaced with designs accomplished by Christian Gobrecht, hired in mid-1835 with the title of second engraver.Quarter dollar production was relatively small in 1831, outpaced in raw numbers by the mintages of dimes, half dimes, cents, and half dollars, the latter denomination far outnumbering the others with nearly six million pieces coined. The modest quarter mintage of 398,000 pieces was pushed into circulation and saw plentiful commerce before the hoarding of the Panic of 1837 set in. Thus, while coins in Very Fine or Extremely Fine condition are commonplace, true gems like this are rarities. Among those as pristine as this one, few are as aesthetically impressive. This coin enjoys the first position in the Rea-Koenings-Haroutunian census.
