GOLD COINAGE. About 8000 Half Eagles (Value Five dollars) have been issued from the mint of the United States. They are finely executed. LIBERTY is represented by a female head, in which the finest touches of the graver, display the most perfect symmetry of feature, animated with the truly beneficent expression of a deity. -- The Independent Gazette, Philadelphia, October 31, 1795.Light yellow gold surfaces showcase impressive prooflike fields and sharply struck devices, surrounding hints of deeper yellow and translucent blue toning at the peripheries. The character of the luster is mostly reflective, brightly so, though some satiny cartwheel is present on the reverse. The devices are well detailed from centers to the rims, unaffected by adjustment marks. Some vestiges of adjustment are present between the tip of Libertys cap and the rim beyond, while those where the portrait bust is now prominent are incredibly subtle and seen only after painstaking examination. A bit of foreign matter clung to the die below Libertys chin, leaving a small area unstruck and revealing the natural pre-striking planchet texture below. Scattered marks are seen in the fields, small but made evident by the field reflectivity, including a thin vertical scratch in the lower right obverse field, a finer curved scratch above the left side of the reverse olive branch, a short scrape under C of AMERICA, and scattered minor contact points and hairlines elsewhere. Some fine planchet chips are seen in the right obverse field, another below star 9. A trace of microscopic foreign matter, harmless and nearly invisible, is present right of the 5 of the date and around star 13. A curved lintmark is present under the intersection of the bases of AM of AMERICA.The D. Brent Pogue specimen is among the finest survivors from this famous and scarce die marriage. The lettering of the reverse legend, punched by hand, was erroneously accomplished by the die sinker. Its easy to imagine an employee of the Philadelphia Mint carefully punching the letters of UNITED, following it with STATE, but after hammering home a T punch and an E punch, losing his place, and continuing with a D punch as he did when rendering the word UNITED. Realizing his mistake, the correct S was placed over the errant D, leaving collectors with the best known of the 1795 half eagle error-die varieties. While the mistake is easy to see on even worn coins, it is nowhere better showcased than on this example. The underletter, partially effaced, is clear, as are the lapping lines from the denticles above. Other lapping lines, called "spikes and spurs" in the Bass-Dannreuther reference, are evident elsewhere around the reverse periphery, including a particularly long one between OF and AMERICA, between IC of AMERICA, and above the upright of D in UNITED. On the obverse, these sorts of peripheral lapping lines are seen above L, I, R, and Y of LIBERTY, below the 5, and elsewhere. The central obverse shows two centering dots, with a fine die crack connecting the right dot to ear curl. This appears to be struck from an unlapped (other than the initial correction to the punching error) state of the die, thus Bass-Dannreuther state a.Robert Scot accomplished the first half eagle master dies in the spring of 1795. The first 744 half eagles struck in the United States Mint were delivered to the Treasurer of the Mint by the coiner on July 31, 1795. By the final delivery of half eagles that year, handed over on September 16, a total of 8,707 examples of the first issue of five-dollar gold pieces had been coined. Judging by the review of the design published six weeks later in Philadelphias Independent Gazette, they were a hit.As further evidence of their popularity, a substantial number of 1795 half eagles were saved at the time. However, as John Dannreuther points out, "the high estimates of the known survivors of the 12 Small Eagle varieties [of 1795] added together are only slightly more than 600 specimens." A healthy percentage of those have seen use as jewelry (including, according to family legend, the very first one struck, retained by Mint Director Henry DeSaussure but turned into a ring by a granddaughter). Very few have survived in Choice Mint State, making auction offerings of pieces of this quality marquee events.
