I was in bed with a bad knee so I had my secretary bring the catalog up to me. I jotted down what I thought to be a fair price beside each coin and then added the whole thing up. -- Louis Eliasberg, on the acquisition of the Clapp Collection, 1942.Supremely frosty, a textbook-in-metal of just how beautiful a natural and unimproved silver surface from two centuries ago can appear. Both sides are profoundly lustrous, propelling bright cartwheel across pleasantly toned surfaces. The obverse is silver gray, mellowed from bright silvery brilliance, with gold and pale blue around the devices. The reverse is covered in deeper gold and framed with blue and violet at its periphery. Details are fully realized from the furthest engraved depths of the die, from center to rim, ideally showcasing Reichs design. Libertys portrait is lightly doubled. The surfaces show few disturbances, all of which could have happened the day this coin was struck, including a few little ticks in the left obverse field, a thin hairline scratch from the tip of the eagles beak, and a couple of small contact points above the beak tip. A tiny spot is noted inside of stars 11 and 12 in the right obverse field. The dies are crisp, uncracked, and not fatigued. A single mislaid line from the engravers tool is present beneath the tip of the eagles beak. It is hard to conceive of how any collector could conjure a more honest, more attractive, and more detailed example of this date or design type.While Louis Eliasberg deserves rightful credit as the only person to ever assemble a complete collection of United States coins by date and mint, John H. Clapp and his father, J.M. Clapp, remain largely unsung. The elder Clapp, a Civil War veteran who became wealthy in the Pennsylvania oil boom, died in 1906. He passed along his interest in numismatics and a healthy head start in business, to his son, who continued building the family collection. The cabinet was built via auctions and purchases from the U.S. Mint, including branch mint rarities that were acquired at the time of their mintage starting in 1893. A still-extant notebook kept careful track of each acquisition and its source, allowing Clapp coins to be extensively provenanced today. The Clapp Collection continued to grow well into the 1920s, by which point John H. Clapp was recognized as one of the countrys great authorities on early Latin American gold coins. After his death in 1940, the collection remained intact. Via Stacks, the Clapp Estate sold the entire collection to Eliasberg for the sum of $100,000, making it the largest numismatic transaction ever concluded.John H. Clapp was an active buyer in the magnificent sale of the George H. Earle, Jr. Collection in 1912. The Clapp Collection (and, thus, the Eliasberg Collection) acquired seven of the nine 1817 half dollars sold in the Earle sale. This particular one appears to have come from a group lot of four pieces described as "1817. Different dies probably. Extremely fine. 4 pcs." that brought 75 cents per coin.The Overton-Parsley Condition Census for this variety includes one MS-65, three MS-64 coins, and a single MS-63. No specimen sold equals the quality of this one, with only the newly discovered specimen from our May 2013 sale, now graded PCGS MS-65, surpassing the MS-63 level among those auctioned in the last several years. This appears to be the single finest survivor from these dies. It likewise ranks among the very finest of all 1817 half dollars, particularly when originality, eye appeal, and provenance are given appropriate weight.
