1844-O Eagle - 1844-O $10 NGC AU55. This attractive, Type 1, Southern branch mint 1844-O Eagle has muted mint luster showing in protected areas of both sides. Just a touch of wear on its highest points keeps it from a Mint State grade. The surfaces are original and clean for the grade. The coin is well struck for a branch mint piece with full details on the centers of the stars, the eagles neck, and the area to the lower left of the shield.

Between 1805, when President Thomas Jefferson ordered mintage of gold eagles stopped, and 1837 no gold eagles were made. Coinage was of this denomination was resumed with Christian Gobrechts Liberty Head eagle. The size, weight, and fineness were reduced so that the coins were not intrinsically worth more than their denominated value.

The Liberty Head eagle shows Liberty facing left in profile wearing a LIBERTY inscribed coronet with her hair tied in the back in beads. Two long curls hang down her neck, one in the back and the other on the side. She is surrounded with thirteen six-pointed stars. The date is below the truncation, which shows no drapery. The motif is taken from a Benjamin West painting of Venus. It was also used with modifications for the Large Cents of 1839. The reverse shows a heraldic eagle with outstretched wing looking to the left. On its chest is the Union shield. In its talons it holds the olive branch and arrows. The error in the previous issue, Scots eagle held the arrows and the olive branches in the wrong talons, is corrected. Except for being interrupted by the tips of the eagles wings UNITED STATES OF AMERICA surrounds the reverse, separated from the denomination TEN D. by dots. Dentils are near the edge on both sides of the coin, and the edge is reeded.

Authorized to produce gold and silver, the New Orleans Mint struck quarter eagles and dimes in 1839. It operated from 1838 to 1909. In that time period 427 million silver and gold coins with the O mintmark were coined. By the mid 1850s denominations made in New Orleans included three-cent silver pieces, half-dimes, dimes, quarters, half dollars, silver dollars, gold dollars, quarter eagles, three-dollar pieces, half eagles, eagles, and double eagles. The first deposit was of Mexican dollars which amounted to more than 32,400 dollars. The first coins struck were Liberty Seated dimes. Each year between the beginning of August and the end of November, the mint closed because of the annual outbreak of yellow fever.