1799 $5 BD-5 MS(PCGS#519878)

November 2025 Showcase Auction U.S. Coins

Auctioneer

Stack's Bowers

Lot Number

3123

Grade

MS61

Price

36,000

Lot Description

BD Die State c/b. Superior quality for this more challenging <em>Guide Book</em> variety of the 1799-dated half eagle issue. Beautiful Mint State surfaces exhibit abundant mint frost that yields to subtle semi-reflectivity in the fields. Color is lovely, fully original and generally medium honey-gold, but with enhancing blushes of iridescent reddish-orange around the reverse periphery. The strike is crisp with bold to sharp definition throughout the design, and we note only the barest trace of adjustment (as made) at central obverse, where a few faint adjustment marks are well concealed within the tresses of Liberty's hair behind the ear. Exceptionally nice for the assigned grade, the surfaces show mostly wispy signs of handling with just a light obverse graze in the field before star 1 worthy of individual mention, and then only as a provenance marker. The die state is late, both sides with numerous prominent clash marks in the fields, obverse also with a spindly crack from the left foot of the letter B in LIBERTY to the top of the cap.<p>The Large Stars Reverse variety of 1799 half eagles consists of just two individual die marriages: Bass Dannreuther-5 and Bass Dannreuther-8. Though different reverse dies were used for the two, the large star punches are common to both. Each is very rare. Harry Bass was able to acquire two specimens of each, that offered here the Core Collection BD-5, while the duplicates were sold in our (Bowers and Merena's) Bass II auction. No survivor of the Large Stars Reverse is known in a finer grade than the D. Brent Pogue specimen which, as PCGS MS-63+, realized $88,125 in our Pogue II auction of September 2015.<p>More than twice as many Small Reverse Stars 1799 half eagles have been certified by PCGS than the Large Reverse Stars type. In Mint State, the difference in rarity is more stark, with 33 Mint State submissions for the Small Reverse Stars reflected on the <em>PCGS Population Report</em> versus just six for the Large Stars Reverse. Among the latter, this is one of the most visually appealing and numismatically desirable.