“The store of Dr. Kellogg Berry of Sharon, Connecticut was on the night of the 5th instant consumed by fire. … From not being able to find the hard money, there is reason to believe the store was first plundered, then set on fire. … The hard money was one eagle, one half eagle, besides dollars and small change.” — The Poughkeepsie Journal, Poughkeepsie, New York, February 13, 1811 With its fine frost and toning highlights of rose and pale green, this is an especially lovely example of the scarcer of the two die varieties of 1811 half eagles. A thick film of satiny luster covers both sides, enriching the attractively toned medium yellow surfaces. Some shallow abrasions are noted in the fields, none particularly serious, though we note a nick inside of star 3 and a cluster of tiny marks above the eagle’s head. A short hairline is present in the lower left obverse field. Fine cracks originate from the upper point and lower right points of star 9, the latter making contact with star 10 below it, designating this as the later of two die states cited by Bass and Dannreuther. Light evidence of clashing persists among the details of the absolute central obverse. Barney Bluestone was born on January 25, 1888, in Syracuse, New York, the town where he earned his living as a professional numismatist for most of the first half of the 20th century. His World War I draft card describes him as tall and partly bald, with a mother and father who depended upon him for support. By the 1920 census, he was the owner of a restaurant and a newlywed; both he and his English-born bride, Harriet, were raised by parents who were born in Russia. Five years later, the New York state census listed him as a fruit merchant, but the Syracuse city directory of the same year showed a change of direction: Barney Bluestone of 624 Madison Street was a numismatist. The business was apparently good to him, as the 1930 census lists Bluestone as a numismatist in the industry of “coins and paper money,” based in a leafier neighborhood of Syracuse and now sharing his home with his wife and an 18-year-old servant named Stella. One wonders if her numismatic name helped her get the job. Bluestone’s first auction, including rare colonials like a Sommer Islands shilling and a Higley copper, was held in Rochester, New York in 1931. Seven years later, he had attracted enough goodwill and good consignments to catalog his first auction to receive a grade above a “B” in John W. Adams United States Numismatic Literature. The sale, his 41st, attracted consignments of superb colonials, rare Confederate and colonial paper money, and a group of 13 “United States $5.00 Gold Pieces Including Some Excessively Rare Pieces” that included this coin. The inside cover of the catalog boasted that Bluestone’s mailing list “contains over 1,500 active collectors.” One of them, in the ritzy suburbs of Philadelphia’s Main Line, was Floyd Starr. After he bought this coin from Bluestone in 1938, it didn’t see the light of day again until 1992. After his last auction, conducted in February 1950, Barney Bluestone moved to Florida, where he died in obscurity near Miami, “on an unknown day in an unknown town” according to John W. Adams, though records that were little accessible when Adams wrote reveal that he passed away in Dade County, Florida sometime in April 1956. Floyd Starr lived until 1971, more than a decade before coins from his collection began returning to the marketplace. Starr’s superb collection of large cents was sold by Stack’s over two sales in 1984. His remaining coins were sold at auction in 1992 and 1993. Since this piece was sold in the 1992 Starr auction, no 1811 Small 5 half eagle graded finer than MS-64 by PCGS has ever sold at auction, and PCGS has not certified even a single example at MS-65 or finer. PCGS# 507599. NGC ID: 25PH.
