The Indian Head Quarter Eagle (1908–1929)

The quarter eagle is the $2.50 piece, one quarter of the $10 eagle set by the Coinage Act of 2 April 1792. The first were struck at Philadelphia in 1796. Through the nineteenth century the type that closed that run was Christian Gobrecht’s Liberty Head, in production — with minor changes — from 1840 to 1907. This collection’s 1878 piece carries that high relief.

Theodore Roosevelt wanted a different coin. He thought what circulated was dull, and he asked Augustus Saint-Gaudens for the $10 eagle and the $20 double eagle. Saint-Gaudens died of cancer in August 1907, with the quarter eagle and the half eagle still without a new model. The solution did not come from the chief engraver. Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, a Boston physician and collector, proposed it from Egyptian reliefs at the Museum of Fine Arts: strike the design incuse, sunk into the field, rather than raised above it.

Bigelow, Pratt, and the portrait

Roosevelt accepted the commission. Bigelow recommended Bela Lyon Pratt (Norwich, Connecticut, 1867), trained at Yale and in Paris, and a student of Saint-Gaudens at the Art Students League in New York. Pratt delivered the models in January 1908, for the quarter eagle and for the $5 half eagle.

The obverse drops the coroneted Liberty and uses a male bust in a feathered headdress, facing left, with LIBERTY on the arc, stars, and the date. Some accounts attribute that portrait to Hollow Horn Bear, a Brulé Lakota leader (1850–1913). The 1908 record describes the bust and the headdress; it does not name a sitter. The reverse carries an eagle standing on a bundle of arrows and an olive branch, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN GOD WE TRUST, E PLURIBUS UNUM, and 2½ DOLLARS. The initials BLP belong to the published type. Charles E. Barber, chief engraver, retouched the dies; Pratt wrote that the retouching spoiled his model.

The coins were released on 9 October 1908. The 1908 record notes that they entered circulation in early November. Philadelphia uses no mint mark. Denver’s D on this type begins in 1911 and sits on the reverse, to the left of the arrows.

The hygiene objection

The administration defended the incuse format because it resisted wear and stacked. The criticism ran the other way. In a period of new ideas about contagion, Samuel H. Chapman, a Philadelphia numismatist, wrote the president that the recesses would hold grease and dirt. Others said the flat field, without a protective rim, would mark at once, and that the recess would make counterfeiting easier. Roosevelt kept the type. The coins circulated beside traditional relief, and the sanitary alarm died down.

Fineness, edge, and two stretches of coinage

Each piece weighs 4.18 g, measures 18 mm, and has a reeded edge. The alloy is 90% gold and 10% copper: 0.12094 troy ounces of fine gold. Those figures belong to the type. The examples in this collection were not assayed or weighed for the record.

There were two stretches. From 1908 to 1915 Philadelphia struck, and Denver struck in 1911 and 1914. After 1915 commercial demand fell, the gold market was disrupted by the First World War, and the mint left the module. It returned in 1925, that year at Denver only, and continued at Philadelphia from 1926 to 1929. The mean of the fifteen business-strike mintages in the table is about 483,000 pieces. That is an average of the column, not a Mint statistic.

How the grade is read

On high relief, the cheek or the breast wears first. Pratt reversed the order. The highest part of the planchet is the flat field; the headdress and the plumage sit below it and survive circulation. The field takes the bag marks. Even in a mint canvas bag, flat gold rubs in transit.

An Indian Head can look “perfect” in the portrait and still grade MS61 or MS62 because of the field. The grade reads the field and the mint luster, not the sunken detail. NGC and PCGS describe it that way in the guides cited below. This page does not assign a Sheldon number to the two raw pieces in the collection.

1908, the first year

Philadelphia struck 564,821 business strikes — 565,057 according to Stack’s Bowers — and 236 matte or sandblast proofs. The new type was saved in quantity: banks and collectors set 1908 aside because it looked unlike earlier coin. CoinWeek, citing the PCGS census toward the end of 2026, speaks of more than 41,000 survivors in all grades and more than 26,000 in Mint State, and of a sharp drop at MS65 (just over a thousand in MS65 or better, according to that note) and at MS67 (six PCGS grading events, none higher). Across the business-strike series, the same note counts eight coins in MS67 at PCGS: six 1908s, one 1914, and one 1929. That census is the one CoinWeek summarizes. It is not a Notofilia count.

The 1908 often shows weakness on the upper part of the eagle’s wing. PCGS and NGC attribute it to the die work, not to a lack of pressure, and later years corrected the hub. Die clashes are also known: obverse and reverse strike each other with no planchet and leave a ghost in the field, sometimes taken for a counterfeit.

CoinWeek reports that in August 2026 a 1908 in PCGS MS67 — honey gold with powder-blue accents — hammered at Stack’s Bowers for $67,100. That is a cited hammer. This collection’s 1908 is raw; the photograph is not identified as a sandblast proof.

1911-D, the key

The lowest mintage in the series is the 1911-D: 55,680 pieces. The next, the 1914 Philadelphia issue, is 240,000. Many genuine 1911-D coins carry a weak, nearly illegible D, from the die and the pressure at Denver. PCGS counts the strong D in its standard census. NGC separates a Weak D designation. Demand prefers the legible D.

PCGS CoinFacts records a single MS66+ as the finest known of that date. The Heritage hammer tied to that piece is not republished here.

The 1911 Philadelphia issue, at 704,000 pieces and the same design, is the usual host for an added D. The NGC and CoinWeek guides describe what they look for when authenticating:

• Nearly every genuine 1911-D, strong D or weak, shows a pronounced wire rim on the obverse, from Denver’s pressure that year.
• A “chased” D is cut by removing field around the letter. Under magnification, striations and spikes show beside the mark and at the nape.
• Another route starts from a circulated 1914-D and turns the 4 into a 1. The spacing of the digits gives the reworking away.
• A cast or struck fake often has a coarse edge, hollow digits, and poorly made stars.

This collection has no 1911-D. The page does not authenticate other people’s coins.

1929 and Executive Order 6102

Philadelphia struck 532,000 quarter eagles in 1929. They barely circulated. They sat in Treasury and bank bags while Wall Street collapsed. On 5 April 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102, under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917: it forbade hoarding gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates, and required surrender to the Federal Reserve in exchange for paper, with narrow exemptions for small amounts and for rare pieces. The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 melted much of that gold into bars.

What remains of 1929 is what left the country before 1933, what someone saved, or what fit the collector exemption. The uncirculated survivors also spent years rubbing in the bag: the flat field took marks. CoinWeek notes that pieces finer than MS64 are scarce and that PCGS has a single MS67, graded in August 1987. This collection has no 1929.

Proofs: sandblast, matte, and Roman finish

Proofs were struck only from 1908 to 1915. They do not have the mirror of nineteenth-century Liberty proofs. The 1908 proof (236) was sandblasted after the strike: a coarse, dark grain that absorbs light. Collectors of the time rejected that matte. Many proofs went unsold and the Mint melted them. From 1911 to 1915 the matte is finer and still found no market. CoinWeek estimates about 1,200 surviving proofs across all years. Coin World reports a 1908 Proof 67, sandblast, hammered at $38,400 at Stack’s Bowers.

In 1910 the mint moved to a Roman finish, satiny. The cited tables separate 681 of that finish and one matte. This page has not seen that unique matte proof.

Repunched dates

The series has no large overdates. In 1908 the date was still punched into the die by hand, and a minor repunching turns up. From 1909 the date sits in the master hub. Those varieties do not drive the gold market the way Indian Head cent repunchings do.

Type, date set, and the cited figures

A twentieth-century type set usually needs one coin. The 1908, the 1909, and the issues from 1925-D to 1928 fill that place. A date set runs into the 1911-D in every grade and into the 1929 when the field has to be clean.

The next table summarizes the PCGS Price Guide and the auction notes gathered in the dossier for three dates. The figures move with gold and with the cycle. They are not a Notofilia list.

Notes in the dossier speak of a premium when CAC applies the green sticker to an MS64 or MS65, often 20% to 40% against a coin without that sticker. This page did not measure that premium. The sticker does not replace reading the field.

Beside it, the ten-dollar eagle

In 1907–1908 Saint-Gaudens placed a profile Liberty in a headdress on the $10 eagle, at Roosevelt’s request. It is not a portrait of a Native sitter, and the relief is the ordinary kind, not Pratt’s incuse. The early 1908 eagles were struck without IN GOD WE TRUST: Roosevelt did not want the name of God on the coin. Congress ordered the motto back the same year. Sources give 33,500 pieces for that no-motto variety. It is another module. Pratt’s quarter eagle reads 2½ DOLLARS and measures 18 mm; the half eagle reads FIVE DOLLARS and measures 21.6 mm.

What this case holds

The type opens with the commission from Roosevelt and Bigelow, crosses the wartime pause, and stops in 1929, before the 1933 gold recall. The recess protects the device and gives the field to bag marks. In this case are the 1908 and the 1912, both Philadelphia, with no D and no holder. The 1911-D and the 1929 are not here.