Lot 1839
Eliasberg's 1845-O $2.50 Gold. PCGS graded AU-55 Eliasberg. A famous coin, though a few better ones seem to exist. Eliasberg often had the best money could buy, and if he could never locate an Uncirculated 1845-O he must have felt this piece was not a bad compromise. Its surfaces are mellow golden yellow and without much in the way of abrasion, other than a fairly fresh-looking but short scratch at the bottom of the reverse. On the front the strike is quite sharp, while the other side shows softness in the center. The date and mintmark are big and bold. And a lot of sparkle and even some satiny luster remains. PCGS has graded only 4 better.
Tiny mintage of 4,000 quarter eagles, from the days when New Orleans was a bustling port town and nearby plantations enslaved millions for life, planting and harvesting them cotton fields and serving their masters in every other way. "Romantic"? Some cataloguers say so, frequently, but the reality was a mixed bag. If you were free or a landed gentryman, life was generally good, even luxurious for the luckiest. If not, the comforts of "life employment" were diminished by the horrors of enslavement. These forces conflicted of course for reasons of money mostly and were brewing towards the Civil War, but before that would come we would briefly fight Mexico in Texas and the Gold Rush would flame America into a moneyed land. At the time this little treasure was struck, down in the South, however, that gold was but a dream; there just was not much yellow metal to make into money for commerce in the early and mid 1840s. Hence the meager issuance at New Orleans in 1845. In this coin, the new owner will capture that past and may even recall it, if his imagination is vivid, every time he sees that distinctive "O" mintmark below our eagle.
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