1838 Proof Half Dollar Pattern - J-81, Restrike

Coin Details

Auction Record

$20,400 PR67BN 09-17-2020 Heritage Auctions

Description

Cataloged as Judd-81 (Pollock-88) and rated Low R.7, this copper striking shares the same dies as its silver counterpart Judd-80, pairing the modified Seated Liberty obverse with the "defiant eagle" reverse. The obverse features Gobrecht's Liberty seated without drapery, surrounded by thirteen stars, with LIBERTY in incuse letters on the shield and the date below. The reverse displays an eagle in flight facing left, holding six arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other, with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA along the border and HALF DOL. At the bottom. Struck in copper with a reeded edge. An estimated six to eight examples survive, all have been produced in the late 1860s or early 1870s. The first known auction appearance was in the 1875 Cogan sale of the Colonel Cohen Collection, the same sale that introduced the silver Judd-80 to the collecting world. Today, three of the known specimens reside in institutional collections at the Smithsonian Institution, the Connecticut State Library, and the Western Heritage Museum, reducing the available population for private collectors to just three or four pieces. Pattern researchers have noted that the reverse die itself was a creation of the restrike period rather than an original 1838 product, indicating that neither originals nor restrikes in the traditional sense exist for this variety; instead, all known examples may represent the first and only use of a die completed decades after the obverse was engraved.