That man changed my entire life. -- Eric P. Newman, on Burdette G. Johnson.A glittering and highly reflective gem Proof striking, elegantly toned in familiar shades of pastel and cobalt blue, magenta, and gold that turns to brilliance at an angle. Persuasively distinctive from other high grade 1821 Bust halves, its fields are deeply mirrored and its devices struck up in every impossibly minuscule detail. Neither obverse nor reverse shows any frost or cartwheel luster, though the obverse shows brighter reflectivity than its counterpart. The lovely old toning obscures some light hairlines, not to be confused with the parallel raised die finish lines that can be seen under study, but this piece shows no contact marks of any consequence and has clearly been carefully handled since its moment of mintage. The fine raised die finish lines are visible on both sides, an indication of its extremely early die state, and a batch of stronger lapping lines cling to Libertys throat. A small curved lintmark is present in the field right of star 2. This specimen is better struck than the other Proof claimant from these dies, the Gustav-Lichtenfels coin that sold in the 1975 John A. Beck I sale. That piece was softly struck at UR of PLURIBUS to the point of obscuring those letters, while this piece is resounding complete there and everywhere else. The die state of this piece is early, though a very light crack is seen above D of UNITED to above STAT of STATES.A landmark offering, long held in the Eric P. Newman holdings and not offered at auction since before World War II. Just two Proof 1821 half dollars have been certified by NGC; PCGS has certified none. The Cass-Empire 1821 O-103, which last sold in January 2013, has been recognized by NGC as a special striking, graded SP-67*. Two Overton-107s have been called Proof, the Pittman coin from New Netherlands Coin Companys 50th sale and the Hillyer Ryder Collection, and the Norweb specimen, acquired in 1954; the Pittman coin has been certified as a Proof by NGC, while the Norweb coin is considered by many contemporary experts to be a prooflike business strike. The Cleneay Proof 1821, later in Thomas Elders 1910 Mougey sale, was an Overton-103; it may be the Cass-Empire coin now certified as an NGC SP-67*. As with many coins that were photographed a century ago and have continued to tone into modern times, provenance linking is not always possible with a comfortable level of certainty.While the occasionally-encountered prooflike 1821 half dollars have made the grading services particularly careful about deeming any half dollar of this date a full-fledged Proof, this is one of just two examples to have been so recognized. Owned by two of this countrys most legendary collectors for the last century, it has no prior recorded public appearance. It was not known to Breen or other Proof researchers, and it has never been available to the last several generations of advanced American numismatists. Its appearance in the D. Brent Pogue Collection is a history-making event.
