1868

Reconstruction-era America was still working through the financial wreckage of the Civil War when the Philadelphia Mint produced just 5,700 business-strike half eagles dated 1868. Gold coins remained largely absent from everyday commerce, the public used greenback paper, fractional notes, and silver substitutes, while gold itself flowed to bank vaults, customs houses, and overseas trade. The 1868 strike continued the pattern of suppressed Philadelphia output that defined the late 1860s, with the new Type 2 With Motto reverse carrying Christian Gobrecht's heraldic eagle and the IN GOD WE TRUST scroll first added in 1866. Almost every example coined that year either crossed an international counter or sat in a banker's drawer, and very few ever reentered the collecting stream.

Authentication starts with the basics: weight should fall at 8.359 grams on a calibrated scale, diameter at 21.6 mm, with a clean reeded edge and no seam suggesting a cast counterfeit. The composition is 0.900 fine gold alloyed with 10 percent copper, giving the surfaces the warm reddish-yellow tone collectors associate with U.S. gold of the period. Because 1868 P sits among the rarest dates in the entire Coronet series, examine the date numerals under magnification, added or recut digits are a known transfer-die deception, where common 1868-S coins (or contemporary dates) are altered to mimic the scarce Philadelphia issue. The mintmark area below the eagle should be completely smooth and free of tooling, since any trace of removed metal points to a doctored 1868-S being passed as the no-mintmark variety.

PCGS and NGC together have certified only a few hundred 1868 business strikes across all grades, and the survival pool is heavily skewed to circulated VF through XF examples. Mint State coins are genuinely rare, with attractive AU and uncirculated pieces commanding strong premiums whenever they appear at auction. Heritage records show problem-free XF examples trading in the mid four figures, while certified Mint State coins routinely cross five figures. Anyone building a date-by-date set of Liberty Head half eagles will find 1868 P among the toughest acquisitions in the With Motto run, ranking alongside 1869 and 1875 as a true Philadelphia stopper. For more on the design history and broader context, see the Liberty Head Half Eagle series history.