Lot 4229
1915-S Panama-Pacific Gold $2.50. PCGS graded MS-67. Well struck with lovely natural golden toning. As nice as this coin is seen. The otherwise golden-orange color warms to denser sunset-red shades in areas. The devices were struck smack on the dot at the required force by the dies leaving all design elements on Columbia and the hippocampus plain and clear-cut, with not even an iota of weakness as found on scales of the sea beast, unlike some examples parading around in the same numerical grade. Superb! Pop 14; none finer. (PCGS # 7450) .
Columbia -- wearing an ambiguous headdress that might conceivably have been intended to represent a liberty cap -- rides sidesaddle and facing backwards on a hippocampus, which is to a horse what a mermaid is to a woman. In her free hand is a caduceus, said to represent the medical breakthrough of Col. William C. Gorgas' successful campaign with the U.S. Army Medical Corps to put an end to the malaria and yellow fever epidemics which had halted all previous canal-building attempts. According to Slabaugh, the hippocampus itself alludes to commerce through the Canal; this requires elaboration, and the best we can do is to surmise that it alludes to the Canal as making possible the transportation of land-based goods (normally by draft horses) by water (as the fish body swims): the mythological equivalent of a ship, though its original symbolism was very different. Mintmark S is in exergual space, far to right of date.
Estimated Value $13,000 - 15,000.
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| Realized $17,825 |
