Lot 2391
1910 $2.50 Indian. NGC graded MS-65. A frosty gem. Lustrous satiny golden surfaces with this degree of perfection are nearly impossible to find on the Indian $2.50 gold series. Nearly full ruffled front and headdress details on the sharp-featured Indian. A truly beautiful gem specimen of a popular Philadelphia mint issue from our Gold Standard days when actual circulating gold coins kept the banks and the government on a short leash, allowing them little leeway when inflating the money supply. NGC reports 82 at this level with 6 in MS-66 as finest graded (PCGS # 7941) .
To give readers an idea of just how much money $2.50 in gold was back in 1910, we can point to the Ford Motor Company, America's biggest corporation in terms of labor force. At the time, the average assembly line worker received $2.43 per day in wages. And that was for a 10-hour workday.
Four years after this Indian quarter eagle was struck, Ford created a furor in labor-management circles when, in 1914, he unilaterally raised his worker's pay to $5 a day and reduced the hours to 8 hours per day! Now who among you can afford to put aside a full days' labor into a single for-circulation coin? And remember, this was 1910, at a time when coin collecting, and the prospects for a rise in the value of such coins, was nil?
Ford figured that a well-paid workforce would become his best car buyers, which turned out to be true. (By 1924, the price of a new Ford Model-T was $290.00.).
Estimated Value $7,000 - 8,000.
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| Realized $8,338 |
