1901-O

The 1901-O occupies an unusual place among late New Orleans eagles: a date genuinely available through low Mint State for type collectors, yet one that vanishes once the grade window narrows to MS63 and finer. The eighth post-1888 production season at the southern branch saw 72,041 pieces struck before most shipped into bank reserves and Caribbean commerce. Doug Winter groups it with the 1903-O and 1904-O as the three most readily found With Motto eagles from the facility, and that availability shapes how the date is collected today.

Strike is unusually crisp for the New Orleans Mint, Winter calls it "one of the better produced gold coins from this mint," with sharp detail across both sides and only occasional softness at the central hair. Luster ranks among the finest seen on any O-mint eagle, frosty on most survivors with a small semi-prooflike subset. The trade-off is surface quality: bagmark clusters in the open fields are the rule, which drives the steep premium between MS62 and MS63. Authentication for a semi-key of this type starts with the mintmark, the "O" should sit cleanly between the eagle's tail and the arrow feathers without the soldered halo or tooled field that betrays a mintmark added to a far commoner Philadelphia 1901. Weight should land at 16.718 grams within mint tolerance, and specific gravity near 17.2 confirms the 90/10 gold-copper alloy.

Population data underscores the condition-rarity profile: PCGS shows roughly 91 examples graded with only 26 finer, while CAC has approved just 23 at MS63 with seven above. The benchmark public sale remains a CAC-approved PCGS MS63 in Heritage's 2019 ANA auction, which brought $2,880, a figure Winter has since called soft given how few pieces qualify. For a collector building a representative With Motto set, the 1901-O is where the budget bends: an EF or AU is straightforward, an MS62 is attainable, and anything beyond becomes a hunt rather than a purchase. For broader context on dates, varieties, and rarity tiers across the issue, see the Liberty Head Eagle series history.