Only four to five dozen examples of the 1844 eagle are known from an original mintage of 6,361 and this is the second rarest pre-1863 eagle from the Philadelphia mint after the 1839 Head of 1840. It is usually seen in very low grades and it is quite scarce in properly graded EF45 to AU50. I have never seen an example which I graded higher than AU55 and I rank this as one of the most undervalued dates in the entire Liberty Head eagle series.

This is a sharply detailed piece struck in green-gold. It shows virtually no remaining luster due to a long-ago cleaning but it still has good naked-eye appeal. As on all known examples, there are numerous raised die lines on the obverse at star one and star three.

The only EF45 example of this date to sell at auction in recent memory was the nice PCGS coin offered as Heritage 1/12: 6444 which brought $7,188. Since the Summer of 2008, only four EF45 examples of the 1844 eagle have crossed the auction block.

Despite the new-found popularity of this series, there are still bargains to be had amongst Liberty Head eagles and this 1844 is clearly one of them.