The year 1836 was remarkable for new patterns and projects. — William E. DuBois, 1846Ranked as a Rarity-3 variety when all grades are considered, just three solidly Mint State specimens from these dies have been recognized. Among them, this piece has the longest provenance, traced to the 1975 offering of the James A. Stack collection of quarter dollars, the first of many collections assembled by Mr. Stack to be sold. No relation to the family of professional numismatists, Mr. Stacks eye became legendary long before collecting gems was standard practice. This piece is warmly lustrous, satiny on both sides, with a thick tone incorporating olive, gold, rose, amber, and a few different tints of blue. A glass finds some hairlines and minor evidence of handling, but no heavy marks or major defects. The obverse die state provides the opportunity for up-close study, with a major bisector running through star 7, down the length of the bust of Liberty, through the lowest hair curl to the rim right of the date. Another crack intersects that bisector at the forecurl above Libertys cheek, into the field and then between stars 1 and 2. Another arcs through B of LIBERTY through the top of the cap to the rim beyond, and still another runs between stars 12 and 13 into the lower tresses. A reverse crack connects the base of D in UNITED with STATE before intersecting the rim. The year 1836 is notable at the U.S. Mint as the year that steam coinage was introduced and other innovations were made, signaling the end of the Capped Bust type used on silver coins from half dimes to half dollars (but not on dollars). Christian Gobrecht introduced his Seated Liberty device on the dollars of 1836; it would soon be adopted for all silver coins and persist in use on some until 1891. Just a decade later, assistant assayer of the Philadelphia Mint, William E. DuBois, reminisced in his Pledges of History that 1836 was remarkable for new patterns and projects as it was supposed that Liberty might be symbolized in other forms than the matronly bust, and that the eagle might change its perch. This coin both harkens back to the earliest days of this design type, first used during the Jefferson administration, and spells the beginning of the end of it, yielding to the Liberty Seated design that would remain until the year electricity came to the White House, a dividing point between the Founders and the arrival of modernity.