The workmanship of the Mint edifice is abominable ... put into brick by men who certainly deserve diplomas for botching. — Franklin Peale to Robert M. Patterson, on the Dahlonega Mint, November 25, 1837.One of the most beautiful extant examples of the sole Dahlonega Mint Classic Head quarter eagle issue, this coin shows lustrous orange yellow gold surfaces embracing splashes of pale violet and light yellow in the fields. Good cartwheel is present on both sides, especially bold on the reverse. The strike is solid, showing some of the typical central weakness but still finely detailed elsewhere. A scattering of marks is found under scrutiny, along with a little patch of lines on Libertys cheek, none enough to limit the fine aesthetic appeal. The 9 of the date is either lightly recut, filled, or both; this variety was long termed an overdate, but it is not. The reverse die is cracked, from the rim above 9:00 to the bases of all letters of UNITED, from rim to the wingtip at left, and from the rim through the second T of STATES into the upper reverse field. One of the finest survivors of the entire issue, a stellar way to represent our Georgia mint in any collection of quarter eagles.While the mines of northern Georgia were highly profitable for several years after the first large-scale discovery in 1828, finds and profits had dwindled by the time the branch mint was founded in the seat of Georgias Lumpkin County, the town of Dahlonega. The mints construction was beset by a variety of delays, including lack of skilled mechanics and contractors, poor access to roads or navigable waterways, and difficulty finding dependable water sources for the mints steam engines. While the mints operations got underway early enough in 1838 to strike off more than 20,000 half eagles, no quarter eagles were struck until 1839, making this a particularly historic issue.David Akers called this issue "the rarest date of this type in grades better than EF." Doug Winter has estimated a total survivorship in all Mint State grades at just six to eight pieces, a total that suggests the PCGS Population Report data has been inflated by resubmissions of examples in lower Mint State grades. PCGS lists three submissions that have earned the MS-64 grade, but those figures represent just two coins: this specimen and the James A. Stack coin. The Stack example realized a stunning $55,000 when sold uncertified in 1994, and last sold in our January 2013 sale. While the James A. Stack example topped the Condition Census at the time of Winters 1997 work, this Bass-Pogue coin had not been seen at that point for nearly 30 years, and reasonable people could disagree about which is finer. This example is finer than the Dukes Creek 1839-D (NGC MS-64), the second Bass coin, and other claimants to the crown.
