1839 Liberty Seated Quarter. No Drapery. Briggs 2-B. Closed Claws Reverse. MS-64 (NGC). Offered is a beautiful and rare Choice Uncirculated example of one of the most challenging design types in the U.S. coinage series to collect. The obverse is target toned in halos of vivid steel-gold, charcoal-olive, cobalt blue, salmon-pink and silver-apricot. For the reverse we note powder blue rim highlights to otherwise dominant iridescent champagne-pink toning. Both sides are impressively sharp in strike for the type with particularly noteworthy boldness to Libertys head and the surrounding stars at the upper obverse border. A full endowment of smooth, satiny mint luster rounds out an impressive list of physical attributes.<p>At the request of Mint Director Robert M. Patterson, Engraver William Kneass conceived a rudimentary sketch for a proposed design depicting Liberty seated upon a emblemized shield facing left, holding a pole topped with a pileus (the cap given by the Romans to slaves upon their liberation). Famed portrait painter Thomas Sully refined this concept, and it is from this proposal that Christian Gobrecht made a copperplate engraving to submit to Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury for approval. This is the design from which the Gobrecht dollars were crafted, along with several pattern pieces for Liberty Seated half dollars but, curiously, no patterns for Liberty Seated quarters.<p>Struck on the cusp of autumn in 1838, the 466,000-coin mintage figure for the 1838 Liberty Seated quarter trumps the 366,000-coin figure for the examples of the outgoing Capped Bust design minted in the previous nine months of the year. Beginning with Kneass original sketch, the Liberty Seated design had been in a state of perpetual revision, and even within the few months of mintage in 1838 the reverse design had been modified to extend the eagles claws. Though researcher Larry Briggs noted in <em>The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of United States Liberty Seated Quarters</em> (1991) that this Closed Claws reverse was an alteration to the initial Open Claws design, continued research questions this direct progression and even introduces the possibility of a third, intermediate design that closely resembles another Closed Claws reverse.<p>Once again, in 1840, the dies were reworked. An unknown engraver, possibly Christian Gobrecht or, as some have suggested Robert Ball Hughes, redesigned Libertys portrait to appear more organic, most notably adding drapery folds beneath her left elbow and thereby creating the Drapery design type that would be used until the conclusion of this series in 1891. The initial design without the folds is known as the No Drapery design, and it remains a popular three-year subtype of the Liberty Seated quarter. (The 1840-O comes in both the No Drapery and Drapery types, the 1840 Philadelphia Mint with Drapery only.)<p>The present offering represents a pairing of the No Drapery obverse and Closed Claws reverse design types from the second-year issue in this series. While 1839 No Drapery Liberty Seated quarters are relatively common in lower circulated grades, availability is strictly limited throughout the Mint State grading scale. This near-Gem is among the finest certified and will surely excite advanced type collectors. PCGS# 5392. NGC ID: 23SF. NGC Census; 9; 0 finer at this service.
