1908-1929 Indian Head Quarter Eagle Set NGC MS63. How unusual it is to see a complete, well matched set of gold coins! This lovely set of Indian Head Quarter Eagles has been graded MS63 by NGC. Since the Indian Head Quarter Eagle circulated extensively, a mint set is rare to see. Even more uncommon is the fact that the coins in the set all match in grade. Some of them are housed in newer NGC holders, which allow the viewer to see the coins edge. The designer of the quarter eagle and the half eagle was Bela Lyon Pratt. He was a student of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Pratt made the coins incused and therefore different from all regular prior United States coinage. What was previously the background now became the foreground. The design was shown in relief and sunken into the field. The new design was not popular with commercial interests and the banking community. People felt that the new coins could be easily counterfeited, wouldnt stack easily, 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.

President Theodore Roosevelt was interested in having the nations coinage redesigned. Before the artists death, Roosevelt convinced Saint-Gaudens to remake the eagle and double eagle coins. At the urging of a friend, William Bigelow an art connoisseur, Roosevelt agreed to commission Bela Lyon Pratt to make new models for the quarter and half eagles. Pratt, who had studied under Saint-Gaudens, was an eminent sculptor at that time. At the suggestion of Saint-Gaudens, he had studied in Paris at the Ecole des Beau Arts. He later became an art instructor at the Boston Museum School.

Pratts works comprise many sculptures, busts, and medals including a medal for the President of Harvard University, a bicentennial medal for Yale University, and a figure for the Sears Monument in Cambridge. He had an exhibit of seventeen pieces that won a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in California in 1915.

The quarter eagle design was similar to the half eagle. Pratt chose an authentic looking Native American brave in profile looking left wearing a realistic headdress. His use of realism in choosing a Native American as a symbol of Liberty can be seen as an extension of a tendency that started with the portrait of Running Antelope on the five dollar bill of 1899. Above is the word LIBERTY and below is the date. Six stars are on the left and seven are on the right. The reverse, in homage to Saint-Gaudens, shows the standing eagle facing left. Below it are arrows and an olive branch, symbols of peace and preparedness. He managed to get all four inscriptions on the reverse without making it look too crowed. E PLURIBUS UNUM is in the left field and IN GOD WE TRUST is in the right. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, separated by dots, arcs above the eagle, and the denomination written as 2 DOLLARS is below. The mint mark on the reverse was the highest point and it showed wear first.

Among gold series, the Indian Head Quarter Eagle is the most affordable and most easy to collect. The series was minted from 1908 to 1915, and then it continued from 1925 to 1929. In all, fifteen date and mintmark combinations were issued. With its mintage of 55,680, the 1911-D quarter eagle is the rarest of the series, and the 1913 with 722,000 is the highest.