In their recent October 2011 Pittsburgh auction, Heritage Auctions sold a comprehensive collection of Liberty Head quarter eagles. This collection contained many of the rarities in this series and I’d like to take this time to analyze the coins themselves and the results that they garnered. One of the rarest collectible Liberty Head quarter eagles is the 1841.   
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I was thinking the other day about the cycles of availability that run through the coin market. Around ten years ago, the market was flooded with rare date Proof gold; today you almost never see it. In the late 1990′s, there were a number of wonderful collections of Charlotte and Dahlonega sold at auction; today you rarely see more than a few interesting pieces scattered here and there.   
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The response to the article that I wrote last month on the ten rarest Liberty Head eagles was so overwhelmingly positive that I’ve decided to extend this format to other denominations of Liberty Head gold. This month’s topic: quarter eagles. The Liberty Head quarter eagle series was produced from 1840 through 1907. Unlike the larger denomination issues of this type, quarter eagles were never produced at the Carson City or Denver mints.   
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In the third part of my State of the Market, I kick it West Coast style and take a look at what’s happening with the gold coins from the San Francisco mint. Are these coins still as dead as the proverbial doorknob or has some breath been jumpstarted into this long-overlooked part of the market? Looking at the market for San Francisco gold coins from a macro perspective, I’d have to say that the overall health of these coins is pretty weak.   
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nother Long Beach week has come and gone and this February’s version provided some interesting insights into the current state of the rare coin market. For me, the week began with attending the Goldberg auction in Beverly Hills. This sale contained quite a bit of rare gold coinage, including extensive runs of early half eagles, numerous high grade Charlotte and Dahlonega gold coinage and some impressive double eagles.   
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In the early part of 2003, an excellent book entitled “The 100 Greatest United States Coins” was published by H.E. Harris. The coins were selected by a panel of experts including myself. The 1854-S quarter eagle was only listed as #87 and was outranked by a number of more common gold issues including the 1915-S Octagonal and Round Pan-Pacific $50 gold pieces, the 1879 Flowing Hair Stella and the 1848 “CAL” quarter eagle.   
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