1798 8 Over 7, 9X4 Stars

The 1798/7 eagle with the 9x4 star arrangement is the more available of the two overdate varieties struck that year, cataloged by Bass and Dannreuther as BD-1. Engravers at the Philadelphia Mint pulled an unused 1797 obverse die from the rack, punched a fresh 8 directly over the old 7 in the date, and put it into service rather than waste a hand-cut working die. Liberty's portrait is flanked by 13 stars, but they sit unevenly with nine to the left of the bust and four to the right, an arrangement seen on no other early eagle. The Heraldic Eagle reverse, redrawn by Robert Scot a year earlier, replaced the small eagle that collectors had unkindly called scrawny.

Combined production for both 1798 varieties came to 842 coins, a figure the Mint never broke down by die marriage. Bass-Dannreuther estimates 80 to 100 BD-1 examples survive in all grades, with most falling in the VF to AU range and only a handful in mint state. To attribute a coin as the 9x4 variety, count the obverse stars: nine left, four right, total thirteen. The overdate itself shows as a curved spike or loop of the underlying 7 visible inside or behind the upper portion of the 8, and a 5x to 10x loupe makes the trace clearer. Faint parallel grooves across either side, called adjustment marks, are original Mint features where a clerk filed an overweight planchet down to standard before striking. Authentic pieces weigh 17.50 grams in 0.9167 fine gold, the early eagle alloy that ran slightly purer than the 0.900 fine standard adopted in 1837. Cast copies often betray themselves at the edge, where reeding looks soft or interrupted.

Demand for the 9x4 variety has stayed firm because it serves two audiences at once, type collectors who want a single 1798 eagle and specialists building the Bass-Dannreuther die-marriage set. Heritage realized $288,000 for a PCGS MS63 example in May 2023, and a CAC-stickered AU58 brought $222,000 at the same firm. Honest VF and EF coins still trade well into the five figures. For the broader story of how Scot revised the small eagle and standardized the heraldic reverse, the Draped Bust Eagle series history.