1927 Quarter Eagle Indian - 1927 $2.50 Indian, NGC MS61. This lustrous, Mint State 1927 quarter eagle has original surfaces that are clean for the grade with no notable individual abrasion marks. The strike is above average with full details on the feathers in the headdress and the eagles feathers on the highest area of the wing and shoulder. The vertical marks on the obverse are on the holder not the coin.

The Indian Head quarter eagle was put into production in 1908. Theodore Roosevelt, who had become president as a result of McKinleys assassination in 1901 and was in his second term of office, believed that it was time to reform all United States coinage, which in his opinion was atrociously hideous. He wanted to put into place his pet crime to improve coinage designs by bypassing the mediocre Mint Engraver, Charles Barber. Earlier Roosevelt prevailed on the world-renown sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to remake the gold eagle and double eagle coins. Now, influenced by Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, a friend and art connoisseur, Roosevelt agreed to have Bela Lyon Pratt redesign the gold half eagle and quarter eagle. Roosevelt got the idea of making the coins incuse, like certain ancient Egyptian coins. Certainly this new design would make them different from the coinage that preceded.

The incuse design was an innovation never previously used on circulating United States coinage. It was criticized by people in banking and numismatics. They 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 the coins remained in production and circulation until 1929, when the Great Depression caused economic upheaval.

The coin is incuse, which was a technique the ancients used; however, this design was never used before on a United States circulating coin. It drew much criticism from the banking and coin collecting communities, but the public was generally indifferent.