Gem 1836 Browning-1 Quarter
The Eliasberg-Gardner-Bender Specimen Finest Known
1836 Capped Bust Quarter. B-1. Rarity-3. MS-65 (PCGS). CAC.
Both sides are lustrous and frosty with delicate, iridescent toning in golden-apricot that appears to drift toward the borders. Star 7 is blunt, but the others are sharply detailed. There is also some softness within the upper hair curls and cap, on the reverse at the top of the eagle's left wing, although much of this can be attributed to die state rather than a poorly executed strike. Sharply defined otherwise, and expectably smooth at the assigned grade level. The 1836 Capped Bust quarter has the second highest mintage of the type, including both the Large and Reduced Diameter variants, eclipsed in this regard only by the 1835. Even so, Mint State survivors are scarcer than those of most other Reduced Diameter Bust quarter issues, particularly the 1831, 1834 and 1835. The 1836 is virtually unobtainable as a Gem and, in fact, neither the 2008 Tompkins census nor the 2010 Rea-Peterson-Karoleff-Kovach census lists an example of the Browning-1 dies finer than MS-64. The present specimen is included in both listings, nonetheless, but with its conservative MS-63 grade from our (Bowers and Merena's) April 1997 Eliasberg Collection sale. Now certified MS-65 by PCGS and CAC, this coin is CC#1 for the 1836 B-1 dies, and also CC#2 for the 1836 as an issue behind a single B-3 specimen certified MS-67 by PCGS (the Rea et al. plate coin). Struck from a shattered state of the obverse die with the following cracks: from the rim right of the digit 6 in the date into the lower hair curl; from the hair curl diagonally below Liberty's ear and past the eye, curving up to the right through the letter B in LIBERTY and the cap, continuing to the rim above star 8; and from this crack near the ear, through the chin, into the field between stars 1 and 2. The reverse has a thin die crack through the letters STATE.
PCGS# 5355. NGC ID: 23S3.
PCGS Population (all die marriages of the issue): 1; 1 finer (MS-67). CAC Stickered Population: 1; 0.
From the Srotag Collection. Earlier from Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr.; our (Bowers and Merena's) sale of the Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. Collection, April 1997, lot 1411; later, David Lawrence Rare Coins, June 2004; Eugene H. Gardner; Heritage's sale of the Eugene H. Gardner Collection, Part III, May 2015, lot 98325; Tom Bender; Heritage's sale of the Bender Family Collection, February 2023 Long Beach Signature Auction, lot 3725.