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Sale 78
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Lot 1691
1796 Stars BD-3 Rarity 5+. PCGS graded AU-55. Well struck on a decent planchet with plenty of mint luster present within the protected areas. We note a mint caused lint mark in the right obverse field, undoubtedly present when struck. Minor adjustment in hair; struck from clashed dies. Only 432 minted for this first year coin.
Similar in many regards to the 1796 No Stars that precedes this With Stars offering, substantial detail expands across the highpoints on this fine example, including exceptional hair and curls, cap detail and eye on Liberty. This follows through to the reverse where E PLURIBUS UNUM is complete except for the first U in UNUM; full horizontal shield lines in the "chief", merged lines in the vertical stripes (as often found on the 1796-1807 heraldic reverse coins. About the only ineffectual imprint was left in a few areas by the recoil of the dies such as the neck feathers (lacking) and left claw, where the claws are merged.
One of the sharper extant 1796 With Stars Quarter Eagles. The 1796 No Stars issue stands as a desirable item to Type collectors. Yet this far more elusive With Stars issue escapes the limelight to an extent, and this is unfortunate. For it is much the rarer of the two types in all grades, and far more difficult to find in choice grade such as here. A definite highlight of the early gold selections in this sale, and a coin we are sure will have no difficulty finding its way into an top-end collection.
Despite its occasional overshadowing by the No Stars type, advanced specialists in early gold realize the rarity of this issue in any grade. Pop 6; 7 finer, 4 in 58, 1 in 61, 1 in 62, 1 in 63 (PCGS # 7647) .
Historic Note: Sometimes forgotten by catalogers and numismatists, the 1796 With stars is itself, like its companion piece having No Stars, an important one-year Type. The only Capped Bust Right, Heraldic Eagle Quarter Eagle that has 16 obverse stars. The government did this at the time of Tennessee's admission to the Union as the sixteenth state on June 1, 1796. Concerns over how the handle the increase in new states caused the Mint by 1797 to abandon the practice of adding a new star to our nation's coinage every time a state joined the Union. From that point on, the use of 13 stars to pay tribute to the original 13 colonies became standard practice for the design and minting of United States coins.
The number of the 1796 Stars Obverse is unrecorded since the early Mint often used dies until they broke regardless of the year on the die. Often the die’s year did not match that on the calendar. Numismatic researchers have long accepted an estimated mintage of just 432 coins for the 1796 With Stars Quarter Eagle. The figure matches the delivery made on January 14, 1797 in fulfillment of warrants placed by gold bullion depositors. Writing in his 2006 book Early U.S. Gold Coin Varieties: A Study of Die States, 1795-1834, John W. Dannreuther estimates that only 40 to 50 of those coins have survived to the present day. (This is fewer than half the number of 1796 No Stars coins left in existence.).
Estimated Value $90,000 - 100,000.
The Del Valle Collection.
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| Realized $117,500 |
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