The general muster and review of the 2nd Regiment takes place in this city, near the American House, on Friday next. The paymaster for the city has got his half dollars all ready for distribution, as usual.” — Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, Bangor, Maine, September 18, 1839</em>Splashed with colorful highlights of yellow gold, amber, and blue-green across the dappled medium gray obverse, and more thoroughly toned in deep frosty amber with pastel blue highlights around the reverse, this gem half dollar displays a painterly combination of superb luster and beautiful patina. Lively cartwheel luster spins around both sides. The fields are frosty and fresh, free of any but the most minimal marks. A glass finds some light lines and marks on Liberty’s face, including a few marks on her neck and a dig below her eye, though none are of much consequence. A parallel batch of adjustment marks crosses the very tip of Liberty’s bust, finding a location where no significant design elements are affected. From arm’s length or under a glass, exceptional beauty is a hallmark of both obverse and reverse.The superb obverse strike has stolen some thunder from the reverse, as the high relief of Liberty’s cap and her bust truncation has attracted metal flow away from F of HALF and D of DOL, along with STA of STATES, causing those letters to appear a bit softly rendered. Otherwise, each design element is flawlessly presented, with neither cracks nor clashes evident. This coin was as well made as it is well preserved.Struck over the course of just half a year, the mintage of 1839 Capped Bust half dollars was less than half that of 1838. According to a letter in the National Archives quoted by Walter Breen in his <em>Proof Encyclopedia,</em> the first examples of the new Liberty Seated half dollar design were sent by Mint Director Robert M. Patterson to Secretary of the Treasury Levi Woodbury on August 13, 1839. All other silver denominations had already been changed to Christian Gobrecht’s new Seated Liberty design: the dollar was first in 1836, followed by the half dime and dime in 1837 and the quarter in 1838. When the final Capped Bust half dollar was struck, the changeover of silver coinage to the Seated Liberty motif was complete. Christian Gobrecht’s reimagined bust of Liberty had been in use on large cents since 1835; beginning in 1839, cents featured an entirely original Gobrecht composition. The following year, in 1840, with the resumption of half cent production and a design change on quarter eagles, Gobrecht’s designs would be employed on every United States denomination. Such artistic unity had not been seen on American coins since the days of Robert Scot. Once adopted, the Seated Liberty design did not ultimately yield until 1892. It outlived the half dime denomination entirely; nickel five cent pieces were introduced in 1866, and the last silver ones were coined in 1873. The Gobrecht device also breathed its last on dollar coins in 1873. Though coins representing the first year of a new design are often saved as novelties, no such sentiment is attached to the final issue of a long enduring type. Though modified by both design and technology over the course of decades, the Capped Bust portrait of Liberty that was retired in 1839 was not drastically different from the one John Reich had first designed in 1807. It departed the scene with no known public notice. This gem may have been saved as a souvenir by a militiaman, to whom it represented the pay for his occasional muster on a scenic town green, or it may be the result of a happy accident. The surviving population indicates that both souvenirs and accidents were infrequent. PCGS has graded an 1839 Capped Bust half dollars MS-65 or finer just a half dozen times. This is the only specimen to exceed the MS-65 threshold at PCGS. PCGS# 6179. NGC ID: 24G6.
