1926 Quarter Eagle Indian - 1926 $2.50 Indian PCGS MS66. This Premium Gem Uncirculated 1926 Quarter Eagle Indian is tied for finest known at PCGS and NGC. Subdued mint luster is found throughout the design on both surfaces. Just a few tiny abrasion marks keep this piece from a Superb Gem grade. The strike is above average with full details seen in the Indians headdress and the highest area of the wing. The scuff marks on the Indians bonnet and the lower part of the eagle are on the holder not the coin.

The Indian Head quarter eagle was put into production in 1908. Theodore Roosevelt, who had become president as a result of McKinleys assassination in 1901 and was in his second term of office, believed that it was time to reform all United States coinage, which in his opinion was atrociously hideous. He wanted to put into place his pet crime to improve coinage designs by bypassing the mediocre Mint Engraver, Charles Barber. Earlier Roosevelt prevailed on the world-renown sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to remake the gold eagle and double eagle coins. Now, influenced by Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, a friend and art connoisseur, Roosevelt agreed to have Bela Lyon Pratt redesign the gold half eagle and quarter eagle. Roosevelt got the idea of making the coins incuse, like certain ancient Egyptian coins. Certainly this new design would make them different from the coinage that preceded it.

The incuse design was an innovation never previously used on circulating United States coinage. It was criticized by people in banking and numismatics. They felt that the new coins could be easily counterfeited, wouldnt stack, and were unsanitary because dirt would remain in the incused features. However, as a whole, the public was indifferent to the new coins, and they remained in production and circulation until 1929, when the Great Depression caused economic upheaval.

Pratt was an accomplished sculptor and medal maker. A former student of Saint-Gaudens and the Ecole des Beau Arts in Paris, he became an instructor at the Boston Museum School. Prominent among his works were a medal for the President of Harvard University and a bicentennial medal for Yale University. In addition to medals, he also made busts and other sculptures. In 1915 he won a gold medal for an exhibit of seventeen pieces at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in California.

In their population reports the grading services show no coins finer than the present piece. PCGS has 40 at MS66 and NGC has 20. These numbers do not account for crossovers or resubmissions.