1839-O 50C MS(PCGS#6181)

November 2025 Showcase Auction U.S. Coins

Auctioneer

Stack's Bowers

Lot Number

2091

Grade

AU55

Price

5,280

Lot Description

This is an issue we only infrequently offer in straight-graded Choice About Uncirculated. The present example retains much softly frosted luster and universally sharp strike detail. Both sides are toned in mottled, iridescent olive-russet and steel gray, the deepest color concentrated in the center of the reverse. Faint hairlines are noted for accuracy, but do not detract during in hand appreciation.<p>This issue is the second on which the New Orleans mintmark appeared on the obverse of the half dollar, the first of course the extremely rare 1838-O half dollar. The 1839-O is the only realistically obtainable mintmarked half dollar of the Capped Bust design type as far as most collectors are concerned, although we stress that most survivors are heavily worn, impaired, or both. This is a condition scarcity survivor in a PCGS AU-55 holder that will appeal to advanced collectors.<p>The 1839-O half dollar was first described in print six years after its production, in a work on counterfeit detection by Dr. John L. Riddell, the melter and refiner of the New Orleans Mint. Appointed to a position at the Mint at the end of 1839, Riddell wrote and illustrated <em>A Monograph of the Silver Dollar, Good and Bad</em> from the deposits that arrived daily at the New Orleans Mint. An inventor, a chemistry professor, and an adventurer, Riddell's creativity and skill were put to use in his production of "metal types adapted for printing, indirectly from the coins themselves." By casting the coins he found into printing blocks made of type metal, the illustrations in Riddell's work are still detailed enough to be useful to numismatists 180 years later. While Riddell illustrated no genuine New Orleans Mint half dollars of this type, neither this date nor its rare predecessor, by 1845 he had already encountered three different varieties of counterfeit 1839-O half dollars. Two of the counterfeits were crudely struck from handmade dies, while the other was cast from a genuine coin in "an alloy like type metal with copper," similar to what is called German silver today.