Lot 2022
1836 Pattern Dollar. Silver, plain edge. Original. Judd-58. Pollock-61. NGC graded Proof XF Details, tooled. Pleasing even grey toning. Popular type coin always in demand.
The United States Mint had ceased striking silver dollars in 1804. Although the denomination was the "flagship" monetary unit in U.S. coinage, demand for it came mostly from bullion depositors. Few dollar coins circulated in the beginning of the 19th century. Much of each year's mintage was either melted domestically or exported.
By the 1820s and '30s however, two successive Mint directors, Samuel Moore and Robert M. Patterson, had advocated reviving dollar coinage. The second of these directors, Patterson, wanted to make an artistic statement. He hired artist Thomas Sully to make sketches of a full figure of Liberty along the lines of the allegorical figure Britannia seen on English coins. Patterson retained noted painter Titian Peale to fashion the eagle for the reverse and instructed newly hired Second Engraver Christian Gobrecht to translate the designs to metal. Gobrecht's design was a composite of both Peale's and Sully's works, as well as his own ideas. The obverse featured the figure of Liberty seated on a rock, draped in a loose-fitting gown-suggesting statuary from Hellenistic Greece. A naturalistic eagle in flight adorns the reverse, the bird rising "onward and upward," a position intended to symbolize the unbounded optimism that Americans had for the nation's future. The eagle flies amid a field of 26 large and small stars, representing the thirteen original states and the thirteen admitted to the Union after 1789 (anticipating Michigan's entry). Regular production of Gobrecht dollars began sometime in December of 1836 (PCGS # 11215) .
Estimated Value $5,000 - 6,000.
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| Realized $6,900 |
