1841-O Liberty Seated Quarter. Briggs-2-C, FS-101. Doubled Die Obverse. MS-63+ (NGC).A charming Choice example with blended powder blue, lilac and golden-apricot iridescence to dominant steel gray patina. The strike is suitably bold for an early date New Orleans Mint Liberty Seated quarter. Softly lustrous with a satiny texture, this coin will delight mintmarked type collectors as well as specialists in Liberty Seated coinage.Although no provenance information accompanies this particular lot, the chances are good this coin is from the fabulous New Orleans find discussed in detail in Dave Bowers American Coin Treasures and Hoards book. In brief:On October 28, 1982, a few minutes past noon, excitement prevailed in the French Quarter in downtown New Orleans as earthmoving equipment brought to light a vast treasure of silver coins. The site, scheduled to be used for a new Meridien Hotel, may have secreted a long-forgotten bank reserve.Passersby grabbed what they could in a frantic free-for-all. In the melee no accounting was ever made of what was found. However, it is estimated that over 1,000 silver pieces were found, including large numbers of Spanish-American silver coins. Apparently these had been buried in three cedar boxes. A report of the scramble by New Orleans dealer James H. Cohen noted:Visualize, if you will, businessmen in Brooks Brothers suits, women executives dressed in high heels and stockings, and laborers in their work clothes all on their hands and knees in mud at times up their waists, digging with their bare hands for buried treasure.In the course of researching this Bowers learned that among large denomination United States silver coins there were various half dollars from about 1811 to 1837, plus a single 1798 dollar. Most attention by numismatists was centered on a remarkable cache of Liberty Seated quarter dollars struck at the nearby New Orleans Mint in 1840 and 1841, many if not most of which were in Mint State! The exact quantity of 1840-O and 1841-O quarters has been a matter of conjecture ever since. In his 1988 Encyclopedia Walter Breen suggested about 40 of the most plentiful variety, the 1841-O, but Bowers thought the number might be larger than that. Further details are given in the Bowers book.
