If Bell needed funds, he bled off part of his collection, and when the fiscal cloud had cleared, he started right up again.” — David Tripp, on Jacob Shapiro, a.k.a. Jake Bell, Illegal Tender, 2004</em>This famous half eagle shows highly attractive orange and coppery highlights around its bright yellow gold surfaces. Finely lustrous and reflective enough on both sides that Walter Breen included this coin in his corpus on Proof coins, the design elements on obverse and reverse are particularly well realized, with just a hint of rounding on the curl by Liberty’s ear. The stars each have centers, all of the eagle’s feathers are struck up, and even the eagle’s talons show full articulation in their joints. The die polish that made the fields lightly reflective missed a few small peripheral areas where frost remains, including an area outside of the gap between stars 11 and 12 and smaller areas above ICA of AMERICA. A short rectangular lintmark is seen between ST of STATES and some fine granularity is seen at the peripheries, typical of the issue. Only minor hairlines and light handling are visible. A short abrasion below star 13 and a horizontal nick below Liberty’s hair curl are inconsequential but remain the most individually notable marks nonetheless.The die state is typical, with a crack arcing from the space between stars 8 and 9, through the points of each successive star before petering out below the lowest curl beyond star 13. On the reverse, another arc crack connects MERIC, reaches the point of the lowest arrowhead, then passes below the final A of AMERICA before reaching 5D. A short crack connects the final A to the arrowhead below it. Jacob Shapiro was the lead consignor to no fewer than three major auctions of rare date gold coins. The earliest of these was the December 1944 J.F. Bell sale, which included over 1,000 lots, every one of them gold. Despite the sale, he continued collecting, and in late 1945, Shapiro entered into a deal with Abe Kosoff to purchase the entire F.C.C. Boyd collection of U.S. gold coins. His financing, perhaps predictably, fell through, so the Boyd gold coins instead went to auction, and Shapiro ended up being a major buyer in the sale. Two years later, he was back to auction mode, consigning most of his Boyd purchases to Numismatic Gallery’s first California auction, entitled “A Memorable Sale,” held in March 1948. The next Shapiro/Bell sale would not be conducted until 1963, by which time his son David was a principal in RARCOA. The J.F. Bell Collection of U.S. Gold Coins, today known as J.F. Bell II, was sold at the 1963 Central States Numismatic Society convention. Its diminutive duodecimo catalog is scarce today. Though the illustration in the 1944 J.F. Bell sale matches this coin, photographic evidence is not prima facie proof of provenance in 1940s catalogs. Fortunately, the appraisal that Maryland dealer John Zug composed on the Clapp Collection for Louis Eliasberg survives, and onto that document Eliasberg neatly penned “1834 Crosslet 4. With Motto. Br. Proof. Stack (Bell) #357.” The image used in the Bell catalog was also used in the March 1944 Flanagan catalog; both come from photographs made of the Col. E.H.R. Green collection of half eagles, most of which were split between King Farouk and Clifford T. Weihman. However, with more than 800 half eagles dated 1795 to 1834, there were enough duplicates to satisfy many other collectors. This coin was one of them. This is perhaps the most famous individual specimen of the 1834 Crosslet 4 With Motto half eagle, itself a famous rarity. No finer specimen has ever been certified.PCGS# 519956. NGC ID: 24F9.
