One of the finest examples of this overdate extant.A beautiful coin with one of the most legendary provenances in American numismatics. Pale golden green frames deep gray centers tinged with a hint of lavender on the obverse, while the reverse is an attractive and varied light silver gray with hints of blue inside the rims. The obverse shows strong cartwheel, while the reverse is particularly satiny. The strike is above average, allowing for detail at the centers of stars 8 through 12, along with Libertys hair and drapery, the right side of the eagles breast, and elsewhere, while places like the clouds and wingtip at left are fairly flat. The obverse shows minor hairlines and some trivial marks, most notably a mark inside star 12, while the reverse is pristine. A light crack connects the rim to the right top of T in LIBERTY, another joins the two outer points of star 7 to the left top of L and the rim. The reverse crack that develops at ITE of UNITED is only visible here between IT. An exceptional specimen, perhaps the finest extant from these dies. The only 1806/5 to merit a higher grade at PCGS is an MS-63+ Overton-103a.Called a very pleasing example with light gray and gold toning covering ample areas of mint frost in the Garrett sale, which continued with an above-average strike for a coin of this variety. Rare so fine. Stephen Hermanns sales records for early halves concur, finding no auction records for Mint State specimens from these dies aside from the 2002 offering of this example. There are two different 1806/5 obverse dies, married to four different reverses to create four 1806/5 die varieties: Overton-101, Overton-102, Overton-103, and Overton-104. Among these other varieties, a few other Mint State examples are known, including the Bareford-Richmond O-102 (graded MS-63 by PCGS, sold in 2004 and 2010), the PCGS MS-62 O-103 from our 2007 Brooklyn sale, and the Queller O-104, sold as an NGC MS-64 in 2004 and 2009. The Bareford-Richmond coin appears to be the only other PCGS Mint State specimen to sell at auction within recent memory. While a Harold Bareford provenance is a superb one, we cant imagine a finer pedigree than Garrett and Pogue.
