2017-P Frederick Douglass 5 oz Silver ATB — PCGS SP70 First Day of Issue

Perfect-grade 2017-P Frederick Douglass 5 oz .999 fine silver America the Beautiful quarter, graded PCGS SP70 with a First Day of Issue label. One example held.

This is the finest grade PCGS awards, on one of the lowest-mintage issues in the entire America the Beautiful five-ounce series. The 2017-P Frederick Douglass National Historic Site coin carries a three-inch, five troy ounce planchet of .999 fine silver — the largest circulating-design silver coin the United States Mint has ever produced — and was struck at the Philadelphia Mint with the vapor-blasted finish unique to the collector version of the series. A First Day of Issue designation means the coin was received by the grading service within the first twenty-four hours of the Mint's release, which is the narrowest window any label in the hobby recognises. Combine an SP70 with a First Day of Issue label on a low-mintage date and you are in a very short population: most survivors grade SP69, and SP70 examples are the ones registry collectors compete over.

The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in the Anacostia neighbourhood of Washington, D.C. preserves Cedar Hill, the house Douglass bought in 1877 and lived in until his death in 1895 — the home of a man born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland who became the most consequential abolitionist orator and writer in American history. Phebe Hemphill's reverse shows Douglass at his writing desk with Cedar Hill behind him, pen in hand, which is the correct emblem for a man whose weapon was the written word. The design was released in 2017 as the thirty-eighth coin of the America the Beautiful programme, which ran from 2010 to 2021 under the Act of Congress that authorised a five-ounce silver bullion companion to the quarter series.

Highest recorded sale: PCGS SP70 examples have closed in the high hundreds · GreatCollections

SP70 is a flawless coin under 5x magnification. On a three-inch silver planchet, which is far harder to handle without contact marks than a one-ounce coin, that grade is genuinely difficult. Most of the surviving population grades SP69.

First Day of Issue means the coin reached the grading service inside the first day of the Mint release. It cannot be recreated after the fact, which is why the designation carries a premium over an ordinary SP70.