By Doug Winter – RareGoldCoins.com

In a recent blog about undervalued early gold issues, I mentioned that the half eagles of 1810 were confusing enough (even to a specialist such as me) that this tends to suppress values for some of the rare issues that are known from this year. Let’s take a more in-depth look at the various 1810 half eagles.

There are no less than four varieties known for the 1810 half eagles and each is distinctive. Two are reasonably available, one is very rare and the fourth is an extreme rarity.

1. 1810 Small Date, Tall 5. BD-1, Breen-6462, Miller-114. This is the second most available variety of the year. Dannreuther estimates that there are 150-225 known from an original mintage of approximately 20,000-30,000 coins. I think his number extent may be just a bit on the low side. This variety is reasonably easy to locate in all circulated grades although choice AU’s with original color and surfaces have become quite scarce. In Uncirculated, the 1810 Small Date, Tall 5 is quite scarce with an estimated five to six dozen accounted for. The finest known is a coin graded MS65 by PCGS that I have not personally seen. There are four to six known that grade MS64.

The Small Date variety can quickly be identified by its having the flag of the 1 in the date being at a steep angle that points downwards. The overall date size is also noticeably smaller than the Large Date. On the reverse, the 5 is placed low in the field and it appears to rest on the denticles. The three denticles below the 5 appear to be shortened and this exact reverse is found on the 1811 BD-1 half eagle.
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By Doug Winter – RareGoldCoins.com

If you have deep pockets and lots of patience, assembling a set of $10 Liberty Head gold is one of the greatest challenges in all of U.S. numismatics. Even if you are lucky as far as locating the rarities in this series, you are looking at a $1-3 million commitment of funds and a time frame that should last at least three to six years; if not more.

I once asked a $10 Lib specialist how he came to choose his set. To paraphrase his answer, he replied something along these lines: “gold dollars were too small, quarter eagles were too monotonous, three dollars and five dollars were incompletable (due to the 1870-S three and the 1854-S five) and double eagles were overpriced. That left the ten lib series…”

It’s hard to argue with brilliant logic like that. And there are a few more points to add. First, the coins are underpriced. As an example, there are a slew of issues that are really cheap (right now) when compared to coins like $10 Indians or Saints or even Liberty Head double eagles. The second is that these coins are big and contain nearly half an ounce of gold. So every time you buy a “boring” common later date issue you are still accumulating a nice chunk of this precious metal. Thirdly, you don’t (currently) have a huge number of collectors competing against you which means that if a rare undervalued coin comes up for sale, you just might be able to buy it very reasonably.

If I were a collector just beginning this series there are a few things that I would do right away.

The first is choosing a great dealer to work with you. Yes, this is a self-serving comment and yes I think I’m the right man for the job. That said, this is a long, complicated series that involves a lot of coin knowledge and good decision making. You can’t assemble a good set of $10 Libs with a mediocre dealer guiding you and you surely can’t do it on your own.
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