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Liberty $10 Eagles, 1838-1907
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Like the Liberty Head Quarter and Half Eagles of the same design, Christian Gobrecht designed the Eagle coins. Prior to 1900, they circulated heavily in the West, where distrust of paper currency was widespread. In the North and East, where paper currency circulated freely, gold coins of all denominations suffered from disuse, most eventually finding their way back to the Mint.
There are two major Varieties of the Liberty Half Eagle. These include:
1838-1866 Coronet, No Motto Type
1866-1907 Coronet, With Motto Type
Coins struck in 1838 and March and June of 1839 exhibit a Large Letters on the reverse and are a recognized minor variety.
During the period between 1866 and 1878, the overall mintages for the Eagle remained low, partially due to the failure of the banks to redeem paper money into the equivalent amounts of gold or silver. As a result, many of these coins are very rare and are seldom seen for sale. These especially include the Philadelphia mint issues struck between 1870 and 1877. Several Carson City issues, especially the 1870-CC, 1873-CC, and 1879-CC, are very scarce coins. Yearly coinage of Eagles at the Carson City Mint exceeded 100,000 only once, in 1891, and all other issues, except the 1892-CC, had mintages of less than 25,000 pieces. Furthermore, these Carson City issues received widespread circulation and in higher grades, are virtually unobtainable.
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