1797 50C VF25 PCGS Secure. O-101a, High R.4....

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1797 Draped Bust Small Eagle Half, VF25
Ex: Davis-Graves Specimen

1797 50C VF25 PCGS Secure. O-101a, High R.4. This Draped Bust Small Eagle half dollar boasts an interesting, if not distinguished, provenance. Its first recorded appearance (to our knowledge) was in the April 1954 Stack's sale of the George L. Davis-Henry P. Graves Collection. While the Stack's catalog presents little information on Graves, Mr. Davis is said to have been born in Lawrence, MA in 1828 and began collecting coins around 1870. Upon his death in 1890 his collection was deposited in the vaults of a North Andover Trust Company where it lay undisturbed until October 1953, a period of 63 years! At that time, Davis' heirs consigned it to auction.
In 1992, the present coin appeared in the Bowers and Merena sale of the James D. Brilliant cabinet. The significance of this collection is that it included all four 1796-1797 half dollar varieties. Only four other public-auction sales are known to have included all four varieties from the collection of a single consignor (the A.C. Gies Collection, Stack's, October 1940; the Dennis Heller Collection, New England Rare Coin Auctions, January 1982; the Jules Reiver Collection, Heritage Auctions, January 2006; and the Bayside New York Collection, Heritage Auctions, July 2008).
Nicely centered on a defect-free planchet, this VF25 example displays excellent design detail. Liberty's hair is especially strong, as are the drapery lines. Both wings show considerable feather detail, and the talons on the right (facing) leg are sharp. Soft grayish-lavender patina with golden-gray accents are seen over each side. The reverse of this Overton-101a specimen has not quite reached its "terminal" die state, as the final crack from the lower-left serif of the first S in STATES to the crack extending from the rim at 9:30 through the wreath has not yet developed. Short diagonal adjustment marks in Liberty's hair at the upper shoulder may help identify the coin, as will a small scrape below the first 7 in the date, and a minuscule mark midway between F in OF and the first A in AMERICA.
Ex: George L. Davis-Henry P. Graves Collection (Stack's, 4/1954), lot 459; Stack's (3/1987), lot 689; James D. Brilliant Collection (Bowers and Merena, 1/1992), lot 40; Superior Galleries (10/2000), lot 3263.(Registry values: N7079)

Coin Index Numbers: (NGC ID# 24EC, PCGS# 6060, Greysheet# 6127)

Metal: 89.24% Silver, 10.76% Copper
Weight: 13.48 grams
ASW: 0.42oz
Mintage: 3,918

View Certification Details from PCGS