1880 Gilt Aluminum Flowing Hair Stella
Judd-1659, PR65
High R.7, Five or Six Known

1880 $4 Flowing Hair Four Dollar, Judd-1659, Pollock-1859, High R.7, PR65 NGC.
Design. The Charles Barber design. On the obverse the head of Liberty, hair flowing down below her neck, faces left, with the inscription (each character separated by stars) 6 G .3 S .7 C 7 G R A M S around the rim. She wears a coronet bearing the word LIBERTY in her hair, and the date 1880 is below. On the reverse a five-pointed star occupies the center, bearing the legend ONE STELLA / 400 CENTS. In an inner circle are E PLURIBUS UNUM and DEO EST GLORIA ("God is glory"), with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and FOUR DOL. around the outer rim. Struck in aluminum, gilt, with a reeded edge. When one compares the obverse of the 1880 Flowing Hair stellas against the 1879 obverse, one notes that the date is markedly smaller and shifted, nearly touching the lowest hair curls and well separated from the denticles on the 1880 pieces, while the 1879s show a larger date, centered under the truncation, close to the denticles and the hair.

Commentary. Symbology: The Five-Pointed Star. The five-pointed star is an ancient symbol, but one that even today finds many uses. The regular five-pointed star with 36-degree angles at each point is sometimes called the golden five-pointed star, and if its colinear sides are joined, it forms a pentagram.

Many different types of fraternal and religious organizations use or incorporate the symbol in their logos and marks, including the Druze, the Ottoman Empire, the Bahá'í faith, and the Order of the Eastern Star. Esperanto, the "universal" language, adopts a green five-pointed star as its symbol.

For the vexillologists who may be reading this catalog, the symbol is used on the flags of many nations, including Pakistan, Chile, New Zealand, Morocco, Ethiopia, China, the European Union, the Philippines, Singapore, Turkey, the United States of America, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, the Solomon Islands, Algeria, and Australia.

The stella was born both to promote international uses of silver and to function as a universal circulating currency for Europe. Its fatal flaw, however, was that its value fluctuated against the major European currencies, as today. It is ironic that the stella is a four dollar coin with a five-pointed star, incorporating six grams of gold and a seventh of silver and copper, to produce an international trade coin--one not quite equal to eight florins, the denominations prevailing in Austria and the Netherlands.

Physical Description. The gilding on this piece was done at the Mint, and it was expertly done. Beautifully consistent honey-gold coloration appears throughout, with premium eye appeal. A few light planchet striations appear on Liberty's brow and the hair just above. Under a loupe some tiny die "lumps" appear in the fields as well, an indication of the Mint's unfamiliarity with handling aluminum, still an experimental and quite precious metal at the time these pieces were struck. A sharp wire rim appears on the obverse from 10 to 3 o'clock and on the reverse from 7 to 1 o'clock, an excellent pedigree marker. There are also two marks near the reverse rim--one below the D in DOLLAR at 5:30, and another small mark between the TE of STATES--that also provide pedigree markers.

Census. This appears to be only the second time Heritage has had the privilege of offering this rare pattern stella since we began maintaining our auction records. The present piece is gilt aluminum, however, while the last offering was not gilt. We are able to enumerate the following distinct pieces, but a couple of others could possibly exist.
1. FUN Signature Auction (Heritage, 1/2007), lot 1600. PR64 Cameo PCGS. Not gilt.
2. Paramount (Rare Coin List #10, 6/1975); Jeff Browning Collection (Sotheby's and Stack's, 10/2001), lot 370. Not gilt, Gem proof.
3. Garrett Collection (Stack's, 3/1976); Harry W. Bass, Jr. Collection (Bowers and Merena, 5/1999), lot 1348. PR67 PCGS. Not gilt.
4. Rio Rancho Estate (Superior, 10/1974), lot 138, "Brilliant Uncirculated," gilt aluminum.
5. The present specimen. Auction '89 (Superior, 7/1989), lot 874; Stack's (9/2003), lot 704. While this piece is also gilt, plate-matching reveals that it is definitely not the Rio Rancho specimen above.
Other Appearances. It is quite likely that some, and perhaps most, of these other appearances cited in the literature actually represent duplications of the coins above. They include:
A. Two pieces owned by Virgil Brand.
B. Two owned by King Farouk.
C. The William H. Woodin-1914 ANS Exhibit-Waldo Newcomer coin.
D. A piece Pollock cites in a 1963 Abe Kosoff sale.
From The Lemus Collection, Queller Family Collection Part Two. (#62044)

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