Capped Bust Half Eagle

For the Capped Bust Half Eagle series, most specimens are found in grades from Extremely Fine to About Uncirculated and no dates are very rare.

Specifications

 * Designer: John Reich
 * Obverse Design: Miss Liberty facing left with seven stars to the left and six to the right
 * Reverse Design: American Eagle with outstretched wings, perched on a branch and holding three arrows in its claws
 * Edge: Reeded
 * Weight: 8.748 grams
 * Diameter: ±25 millimeters
 * Composition:  Gold (91.7%), Silver and Copper (8.3%)
 * Dates Minted: 1807-1834

Background
The Capped Bust half eagle $5 gold coin replaced the Turban Head (or Liberty Cap) half eagle mid-way through 1807. It was designed by Assistant Mint Engraver, John Reich. Actually, in 1807, the talented Reich had not yet ascended to the title of Assistant Engraver, and was, in fact, ready to bolt the U.S. Mint to return to Europe, so dissatisfied was he with the grunt-work assigned to him by Chief Engraver, the aged (and probably professionally jealous) Robert Scot. Mint Director Robert Patterson did not want to lose the engraving talents of John Reich, so he implored President Jefferson for the permission to promote Reich to the position of Mint Assistant Engraver. The permission was granted, and almost immediately, the newly-promoted Reich was given the task of doing a wholesale re-design of the nation’s coinage. So Reich did so, starting with the two coin denominations most in demand by U.S. commerce and national banks: the half dollar and the gold half eagle.

The new half eagle coin, designed by Reich, featured a stout-looking Miss Liberty facing left and wearing a “liberty cap” fashionable in European circles, particularly France (where it was also somewhat known as a ‘mob’ cap)! The Liberty bust extended down to the chest area, but that was draped in cloth. The Liberty bust is surrounded by stars. On the reverse was a spread-winged eagle, above which was a banner reading, “E Pluribus Unum.” Almost immediately, the new Liberty bust was derided in the news journals as Reich’s “fat mistress” model. It’s important to note the “5 D.” on the bottom of the coin’s reverse; before Reich, no engraver had seen fit to place the coin denomination on the face of a U.S. coin– Reich was the first to do that, with the Capped Bust half eagle and the Capped Bust half dollar.

Actually, Reich quit the U.S. Mint in 1817, long before his Capped Bust U.S. coin designs ran their course. Apparently he was none too happy about his lack of a pay raise OR a promotion since being elevated to Assistant Engraver in 1807. From 1818 to 1834, old Mint Engraver Robert Scot would create the dies for the Capped Bust half eagle, and those are considered to be sub-par when compared to Reich’s work.

Sub-Types
The Capped Bust half eagle is divided into two major sub-types: the Capped Draped Bust Obverse of 1807-12, and the Capped Head Obverse of 1813-34. The first type is distinguished by the larger (but slightly thinner) Liberty head with the draped bust. The second type features a Liberty bust that is smaller, chunkier, and ends at the neck.

For the period, production of Capped Bust half eagles was consistently strong throughout its span of existence, rarely falling below five to six-figure mintages. Only in 1815 could the output be considered tiny, at just 635 pieces struck. Those mintages, however, are sub-divided into endless varieties, so common with early U.S. Mint coin types where dies wore out quickly and had to be re-engraved. In the Capped Bust half eagle series we have numerous overdates, small dates, small denomination numerals, large dates, large denomination numerals, curved numerals, squared numerals, “plain 4" versus “crosslet 4", 12 stars versus 13 stars, etc. Still, any Capped Bust half eagle is so scarce and costly today, most collectors are satisfied to own just one or two as opposed to every date and variety.

Collecting
Mintage figures tell you a lot about how scarce or common a particular coin is. But not always. Let’s look at a couple of U.S. $5 gold pieces for example. The 1889 Coronet Head $5 gold piece has a very low mintage of 7,565. It retails $350 in Very Fine condition. Now let’s take a look at the 1831 Capped Bust $5 gold coin. It had a much higher mintage of 140,594. Yet you’ll have to shell out around $17,500 for an 1831 Capped Bust $5 gold coin in Very Fine condition! Yes, you have to factor in demand– the 1831 Capped Bust half eagle is an older, scarcer type– but demand doesn’t account for that huge a price discrepancy. Something else is at work. What’s happening is simply this: the 1831 Capped Bust half eagle is much MUCH scarcer than its mintage would indicate. With a price tag of $17,500 in Very Fine, you can bet that only a handful of those original 140,594 pieces survived into 2006!

Interestingly, the most inexpensive dates in the series are the 1807-1820 dates, which typically retail around $2,500 in Fine, $3,000 in Very Fine. But starting in 1821 and going through 1834, prices rise steadily. For example, the 1824 retails $5,000 in Fine, $10,000 in Very Fine. The 1827 starts at $6,000 in Fine. Then, you have the dates from 1830-34, the most common varieties of which retail $14,500 in Fine, $17,500 in Very Fine! Mintages for those years, if anything, were even higher than normal for this series! So what gives?

Meltings, meltings, meltings– there was an epidemic of U.S. gold coin meltings in the early 1830's, and Capped Bust half eagles were frequent victims, given that from 1804-34, the half-eagle gold coin was the largest denomination gold coin in circulation. Consequently, the later dates in the Capped Bust half eagle series are quite hard to find today.

No need to worry about mintmarks with this series. Unlike the U.S. $5 gold coins that would follow, the Capped Bust half eagle was struck only at the Philadelphia mint. But even as the Capped Bust half eagle was being struck, increased gold bullion was coming out of the hills of Georgia and North Carolina, prompting the establishment of U.S. branch mints in Dahlonega, Georgia, New Orleans, Louisiana and Charlotte, North Carolina in the late 1830's.

Mints

 * Philadelphia Mint (No mintmark)