1909-O Half Eagle - 1909-O $5 NGC AU58. The only New Orleans Indian Head Half Eagle. This near-Uncirculated, Southern branch mint 1909-O Indian Head Half Eagle is a well struck piece. Full details are present in the Indians bonnet, the feathers in the headdress, and the highest areas of the wing. The surfaces are clean for the grade with no notable abrasion marks or other distractions. The coin is a mixture of light and dark yellow gold, which confirms its originality. Significant, original mint luster remains within the devices.
 
In 1908 the new Indian Head half eagle was produced. Designed by Bela Lyon Pratt, the new coin had two very different innovations related to its design. One was the realism used in the portrait of the Indian brave on the obverse, and the other was the use of incuse design details. President Theodore Roosevelt, influenced by his friend, Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, wanted the coinage of the country redesigned. His pet crime was to bypass the mediocre Charles Barber, the Mint Engraver. Roosevelt, who was now in his second term of office, wanted to reform the coinage of the United States, which he felt was atrociously hideous. He wanted the half eagle to use an American Indian as an emblem of liberty and to use the incuse design of the ancients.

The obverse shows a profile view of an authentic looking brave facing left. He is wearing a full headdress. Above him is LIBERTY and below is the date. Six five-pointed stars are on the left and seven are on the right. The reverse shows a standing eagle, reminiscent of the reverse of Saint-Gaudens eagle coin. Pratt fit the four inscriptions on the reverse without it seeming overcrowded. E PLURIBUS UNUM is in the left field, and IN GOD WE TRUST is in the right. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, the words separated by dots is above, and FIVE DOLLARS is below. The eagle stands on a bundle of arrows that resembles the Roman fasces, symbol of the power to kill, and holds an olive branch, symbol of peace.

The use of realism in the obverse portrait was innovative because prior designed Indian head motifs used stylized busts and fanciful war bonnets. Although the name and tribe of Pratts Indian brave are unknown, he is clearly authentic looking. Pratts use of this figure is seen as an extension of a trend started in 1899 with the portrait of Running Antelope on the five dollar silver certificate.

The incuse design of the coin was also an innovation for United States coinage. No regularly circulating coin ever made use of this process before. It was criticized by numismatists and people in banking and commerce. They felt that the coins would not stack, could be easily counterfeited, and were unsanitary because dirt would get into the incused features. However, despite this opposition, the public was indifferent, and the coins remained in production and circulation until 1929, when the Great Depression caused general economic upheaval.

Bela Lyon Pratt, born in 1867 in Norwich Connecticut, was an art educator, sculptor, and medalist. After graduating from the Yale School of Fine Arts at the age of sixteen, he joined the Art Students League of New York where he took classes with, among others, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who became his mentor. Pratt then traveled to Europe where he studied sculpture. He finished first in his class at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1892. When he returned to the United States he worked with August Saint-Gaudens and created two large sculpture groups for the Columbian Exposition in 1893. From then until his death in 1917 he was a Professor of Sculpture at the Boston Museum School of Fine Art. In addition to the coinage designs of 1908, Pratt had many commissions for medallions and medals. In 1909 Pratt did his most medal work; however, most of his 180 works were portrait reliefs and busts. He also did decorative architectural sculpture for buildings such as the Liberal Arts Building, the Buffalo Exposition, and the Library of Congress. He was a member of the National Sculpture Society, the National Academy of Design, the Architectural League, and he was founder of the Guild of Boston Artists.

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.

The 1909-O half eagle is one of the rarest dates in the series. However, the population reports are not particularly useful in this case because numerous resubmissions have obviously grossly distorted the data.