The Larry H. Miller Collection market by Stack’s Bowers Galleries featured some magnificent Barber half dollars, headed by a 1892-O Barber, Micro O half an graded Mint State 67 by Professional Coin Grading Service using a green Accredited Acceptance Corp. decal that realized $132,000.
The cataloger outlines:”Most numismatic scholars accept this variety was made when a Mint worker inadvertently used an O mintmark punch to get a quarter buck in prep of a half dollar expire.” It had been printed in Augustus G. Heaton’s 1893 publication Mint Marks, which popularized collecting coins from Mint markers instead of simply date. Now, maybe 100 survivors are famous in most levels.
A couple of years later arrived the finest-known 1894-O Barber half dollar, rated MS-68, at an old, green-label PCGS holder using a green CAC decal, which sold for $72,000. Its provenance is traced back into the New Orleans Mint at November 1894 as it was obtained by John M. Clapp and invested a lot of the 20th century at the Louis E. Eliasberg Sr.. Collection.
Bowers and Merena noticed in its 1997 Eliasberg market catalogue,”Lustrous, frosty surfaces with fragile odor toning in the centre changing to splashes of blue and gold in the rims,” before calling it,”A just elegant example of a problem that’s a significant illness lurks at this grade level.”
