1890 Liberty Head $5 Half Eagle

1890 Liberty Head half eagles were made at the Philadelphia and Carson City (CC) mints, representing the first year in nearly a decade that the Carson City Mint struck $5 gold half eagles. Ironically, the Carson City Mint, which more often than not produced the smallest number of coins for any given series in any year, actually struck more than 12 times the number of half eagles from Philadelphia that year. While that may sound impressive, the Philadelphia Mint made a very small number of coins.

Here’s a glance at the mintages and values of 1890 $5 Liberty Head half eagle gold coins:

• 1890, 4,240 minted; $829

• 1890-CC, 53,800; $1,021

• 1890 proof, 88; $14,000

*Values are for coins grading Very Fine 20 unless otherwise stated.

Despite the fact that Carson City eclipsed Philadelphia in terms of mintage figures, Philly business-strikes are now the least expensive of the various issues from that year. Today, the 1890-CC Liberty Head half eagle is considerably scarce and is a major collector coin.

It’s important to make the distinction that while Liberty Head half eagles are indeed gold coins, they really are not “bullion” coins and are thus viewed as numismatic collectibles. For the record, Liberty Head half eagles were designed by Christian Gobrecht and contain 0.24187 ounces of gold.