“Silver possesses many of the above valuable properties ... its specific gravity is 10.5; its colour is a clear white.” — Jacob R. Eckfeldt and William E. DuBois, A Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of All Nations, 1842 Luster flashes exuberantly across the surfaces of this frosty treat, making chiefly brilliant surfaces brighter and enlivening the sparse toning highlights around the design elements. Shades of muted olive, slate gray, and plum surround devices on both sides. The eye appeal is excellent, and strong details are seen in most areas. The curl above Liberty’s ear and the wing left of the shield show some localized softness, and the denticles likewise lack crispness in some areas. Few marks are seen in the fields, just a thin vertical hairline behind Liberty’s neck and a shallow abrasion near the tip of the eagle’s beak, though a few little lines on Liberty’s cheek join a single mark lower on her neck. An arc crack stretches rainbow-like across the top of the obverse, ranging from above star 5 to the top point of star 9. The die crack beneath the date that Overton mentions is not visible here. While silver coins showing deep colorful toning often bring premiums from collectors enamored with their aesthetic appeal, no coins left the Mint with a significant degree of toning. A coin like this, lightly toned and supremely lustrous, captures the look of freshly-coined silver well, a color that Mint assayers Jacob R. Eckfeldt and William E. DuBois called “clear white.” The text cited atop this description was probably written by Eckfeldt, whose father Adam was the Mint’s longest tenured employee when he retired in 1839. Jacob Reese Eckfeldt was a trained assayer, unlike DuBois, whose main qualification for Mint employment was parentage; his grandfather Robert Patterson and uncle Robert Maskell Patterson had both been directors of the Mint. DuBois became the keeper of the Mint Cabinet in 1839 (authorized in 1838 and built upon some coins saved by Adam Eckfeldt years earlier) and became one of the best known numismatists of his era. He published Pledges of History, a guide book to the coins in the Mint Cabinet collection, in 1846. “The knowledge of coins is a study,” he wrote, “almost a science.” Though he was fairly new to numismatics, DuBois understood the importance of condition. He described the Mint Cabinet as full of pieces that were “the choicest of their kind; and perhaps there are few cabinets where so large a proportion of the pieces are in so fine preservation.” Fine preservation is likewise a hallmark of the D. Brent Pogue Collection. This coin is one of the four finest 1835 half dollars of any variety graded by PCGS and is the single finest O-108 seen by PCGS. Along with an NGC MS-66 last sold in 2007, this is a strong candidate for finest known. PCGS# 39934. NGC ID: 24FZ.
