Lightly toned and nearly as struck.A mostly brilliant gem whose exceptionally reflective obverse and extraordinary strike give it a highly prooflike look. Faint golden toning is present on obverse and reverse, but the silvery brilliance remains bright on both sides. The strike is exceptionally bold, with many raised die finish lines visible in the fields and the raised texture and engraving strokes of the design punches visible on the devices. The obverse is immaculate, and the reverse shows just a very minor batch of hairlines near the eagles neck and above the wing on the right. No contact marks of any consequence are seen. While the obverse is perfect, the reverse shows a host of delicate die cracks. D of UNITED is connected to the bottoms of ST, then to a crack that joins the bases of ATES to the center of OF. A light crack descends through the left base of the first A of AMERICA from the rim to the top of the wing, and a crack at the tip of that wing crosses two arrow shafts before crossing the lowest arrowhead and continuing to the rim. A final fine crack joins the talons to the branch end, the arrow feathers, and two olive leaves before intersecting the rim.This coin, acquired privately and with no traceable earlier provenance, ranks with the finest examples from these dies in the Rea-Koenings-Haroutunian census, a listing topped with an MS-67 (NGC) coin that brought $100,000 in the Superior session of Auction 90 and two NGC MS-66 coins, including the Haig Koshkarian coin. The only auction offering we locate of any 1834 quarter graded MS-66 by PCGS was in April 2005, though that specimen was a Browning-1.
