Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. buys money for the love of its beauty, and because he thinks coins are the best warehouse of value he can find. --Look magazine, October 29, 1964.Opalescent golden gray toning appears more silvery on the obverse, more golden on the reverse. Unbroken cartwheel luster graces both sides, thoroughly frosty and responding in lively fashion to a light source. The central details are crisp, even as some peripheral design elements such as the stars on the right and the olive leaves are soft. The eye appeal is outstanding, equal to the Eliasberg and Pogue provenances, showing rich originality that is easier witnessed than described. Some light contact points are seen, including a tiny abrasion parallel to the lips in the left obverse field and a thin scratch that descends from the top left corner of D in UNITED to the base of the wing below. A tiny struck-through depression is seen atop Libertys cap. Denticles, sometimes called "segments" in the context of Capped Bust half dollars, are mostly complete, and this die state is unclashed and uncracked. The 0 of the formerly present 1810 underdate has mostly been abraded away, but a shadow of it remains visible.In cataloging the Eliasberg collection, Q. David Bowers raised an interesting query: "This variety is considered, and usually cataloged as an overdate with 1811 over 10. If this is the case, why is the punctuation located between the 8 and 1? Possible answers are that this is actually an 1811 over 09 or that the middle 1 in 1811 was positioned between the 1 and 0 in 1810." Other writers have been similarly unconvinced by the 1811/10 overdate attribution; Dr. Glenn Peterson notes skeptically that the "punctuation" between the 8 and 1 is "a remnant, we are told, of an under-date of 1810." The tiny artifact between the tops of the two 1s in the date disappears quickly as the obverse die wears. On this specimen, it is present but indistinct. Later, including on most specimens struck from the Overton-102 marriage, it wears or is abraded away completely. Overlay study likely would not solve the question, and the large punctuation between the bases of 8 and 1 may be a relic of the process of effacing an underdate rather than a relic of those digits themselves. The suggestion that the overdate is actually 1811/09 is worthy of future study, pending discovery of specimens whose die state is early enough to help add additional data points to our plane.Whatever the precise nature of this variety, the Eliasberg-Kaufman-Pogue specimen is one of the nicest to survive, as beautiful as it is well preserved. The Overton-Parsley Condition Census places a MS-65 coin ahead of three MS-64 specimens and a single MS-63. Among other notable survivors are the Garrett-Pryor coin (graded MS-64 by PCGS when last offered in January 1996), the one in a famous Iowa Collection (now graded MS-64+ by PCGS, earlier from the June 2005 American Numismatic Rarities sale and the 2011 ANA sale), and the T. James Clarke - New Netherlands 47th sale coin that last sold as an uncertified gem in the December 1991 Stacks sale, probably the piece now certified as PCGS MS-66. Of the three entries on the PCGS Population Report at the MS-64 level, one of them is the Dale Friend coin, another is the Garrett-Pryor coin, while the other may be a repeat appearance of either this or the Iowa coin, both of which were certified as MS-64 before the advent of plus grading. It is notable that the names Eliasberg, Garrett, and T. James Clarke emerge when counting the finest half dollars from these dies, as the names of these legendary connoisseurs turn up repeatedly attached to coins now in the D. Brent Pogue Collection.
