1846/'5'-O $10 MS(PCGS#8596)

1846/'5'-O $10 MS (PCGS#8596)

The August 2010 Boston Rarities Sale

Lot Description: 1846/'5'-O Liberty Eagle. Winter Variety Three. AU-55 (PCGS). The most plentiful die marriage of the issue, Winter Variety Three has been described as an 1846/5-O overdate in the past. Something is definitely going on with the digit 6 in the date, as the upper loop of that digit is filled and a large die dot is evident within the lower loop. Whether these artifacts are the result of an overdate, however, is a topic of debate among numismatic scholars.<br />     As an issue, the 1846-O is one of the rarest New Orleans Mint Tens with perhaps only 125-150 coins extant from a mintage of 81,780 pieces (this estimate per Doug Winter in the 2006 book <em>Gold Coins of the New Orleans Mint: 1839-1909</em>). Conditionally rare at the Choice AU level, this prooflike survivor is predominantly lustrous with sharp-to-full definition to the devices. Olive-orange in color, with mostly small, singularly inconspicuous abrasions to help define the grade. The 1846-O is rarer in an absolute sense than such other New Orleans Mint Eagles as the 1842-O, 1845-O, 1848-O and 1850-O.