BOOK REVIEW: U.S. CLASSIC GOLD COINS OF 1834-1839

Hi Folks, What are the qualifications of being a Coin Geek? Well there are likely many types of qualifications. Overall it is folks like us who like to spend a lot of time looking at old coins, reading about old coins, and learning the history that they bring, that are considered to be Coin Geeks. Over the past 6 months, I met those qualifications.

The Classic Head Quarter Eagles and Half Eagles have always been two of my most favorite series in US coins. A friend of mine spent the last two decades building a full die marriage set of both series. That includes examples that are R7 and R8 – meaning just a few coins exist for those die marriages. Both series saw a limited production time from 1834 to 1839 for the Quarter Eagles and 1834 to 1838 for the Half Eagles. They were then closed down in favor of the long duration Liberty Head series. Even though short lived, there are 28 and 34 die marriages in the Quarter Eagle and Half Eagle series, respectively. Most of the production occurred at the main, Philadelphia Mint. However, in the Classic Head Quarter Eagles, the Charlotte mint produced these in 1838 and 1839, and both Dahlonega and New Orleans got into the action at the tail end in 1839. For the Classic Head Half Eagles Charlotte and Dahlonega were in production in 1838.

My friend building the die marriage sets nicely sent me two things related to these series in 2011. First was a small book called America's Gold Coinage published in 1990 by the American Numismatic Society. In it was a chapter by John McCloskey - ‘A Study of Classic Half Eagles, 1834-1838'. The second item was an attribution guide for Classic Head Half Eagles that my friend had constructed based on this chapter and new die marriages identified since. I never had the tenacity to build complete die marriage sets of either series, but managed to get some nice examples including a complete set of branch mint Classic Head Quarter Eagles in XF-AU and CACed prior to selling them off in 2019 to help finance building our retirement home. My friend's set was recently put up for sale by Doug Winter Numismatics and few are still available at DWN. It was quite an impressive feat to build but he said it was complete so on to other adventures.

When Doug told me this was coming up, my interest on these series inspired me to have a look at the book Classic Gold Coins of 1834-1839 by Daryl Haynor published in 2020. I had purchased the book when issued but had barely opened it. So I started at Page 1. The first few chapters are historical about various topics related to these series, very informative and Mr. Haynor writes in a style that keeps the reader interested. By Chapter 10 Mr. Haynor delves into die identification methodology. By Page 79 and Chapter Eleven, the book finally started with descriptions of dies and die marriages of the Quarter Eagles, including attribution information for each die and marriage, finest known examples of each date, and all with high quality images of the coins being written about. By that point I thought, okay, the first 78 pages were very interesting and I learned a lot. Do I really want to read all this stuff about die marriages, bleh…. Well, it turns out, yes, yes I did! I read this book from cover to cover, even though most of it was technical information on dies and die marriages! Yup, 252 pages of die marriage information. The way Mr. Haynor presented this information was fascinating (really!) and I learned more about these series than I could possibly remember but hey, truly enjoyable, give it a read. But this was clear proof - I am a Coin Geek.

I did manage to snag one coin for my collection from the DWN sale of my friend's collection – the Seattle Collection Concierge Sale. This is shown above and is one of the rarest die marriages (R6 – 13-30 known), and was also part of the original John McCloskey collection auctioned by Heritage in 2022 so lot's there for my passion and context within these series.

To read the complete article, see:
DESERT MOON NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 4, December 15, 2024 (https://www.desertmoonnm.com/post/desert-moon-newsletter-issue-4-december-15-2024)

To visit the Desert Moon Numismatics website, see:
https://www.desertmoonnm.com/

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
NEW BOOK: U.S. CLASSIC GOLD COINS OF 1834-1839 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n12a02.html)
BOOK REVIEW: U.S. CLASSIC GOLD COINS OF 1834-1839 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n26a07.html)
BOOK REVIEW: U.S. CLASSIC GOLD COINS OF 1834-1839 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n28a04.html)

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