Some of my other varieties

JRocco · Veteran Member

Hey guys. I know I have taken a break from my Lincoln's, but I needed to chase after some of my other numismatic interests. I love varieties. This led me to early coinage. I have been running after early bust half dollar varieties. I am about 3% complete in that quest Laughing

. Well here are some of the really neat varieties I have been hunting down. (sorry dial-uppers).
1817/3

1814/3

1795/1795 3 leaf

1824/2/0

1829/1827

I will stop here for now Wink

coop · Expert Member

Sweet looking varieties. Got to love those classic designs. Great over dates. A sight for sore eyes. Thanks for the eye candy. Cool

smed · Senior Member

awesome...

murphy · Senior Member

Sweeeet!

Bob P · Site Admin

Very Very nice indeed. I'm with Coop. I just love the classic designs. Although I collect mainly Lincolns, I have a few repunched /overdates dates on Two Cent pieces, Large cents, and some world coins. I do like your collection. You can send them all to me for the standard 50 year inspection at any time Laughing

Russellhome · Veteran Member

Nice post - great photos. I'd like to have one or two of those in my collection.

I have an old 1806 half dollar with one quirky letter...

Did they actually repunch individual letters in those early days? That is what it looks like to me.

Dick · Expert Member

Man, you sure know how to hurt a guy! Just kidding! That is as impressive group of cions, as I have ever seen, (other than in pictures)! I'm drooling, but I guess I'm not alone!
Dick

Bob P · Site Admin

Ken,
I don't believe they repunched letters, but then again, I don't know a lot of what happened around 1806. (DICK...Don't come out saying that you were just a boy back then...we know better Laughing

)
There's no doubt it is a doubled die, and considering they only minted about 840,000 of them, that one's a keeper!

JRocco · Veteran Member

Hey guys.
The Master Hub on these coins only had the central devices on both the obverse and reverse. The dentils, stars, letters, date, shield lines etc were all hand punched or cut into the working dies, thus the great range of varieties. Re-punching and re-cutting (to touch up little flaws) were common.
Cracked and clashed dies were also common back in the days of the screw presses, leading to some great coins for a variety guy to search for.
Here for example is a nice clashed coin-in fact, I can count at least 7 clashes on this coin---all of which resulted AFTER the dies became more and more misaligned.

edited to add- yes Ken, they hand punched EVERY letter individually back then.

Bob P · Site Admin

Thanks for the info John. I did not know anything about how the coins were made back then, but it is now on the back burner for future info. I tried to count the clashes on your coin too. That's a pretty cool coin, and in pretty nice shape too. Thanks again for the info!

Russellhome · Veteran Member

Hand punching/tooling every outer device! Wow - what a job that must have been. It is amazing how well they did producing relativly consistent looking coins (except for the examples you showed above).

JRocco · Veteran Member

Hi Ken,
I can't reproduce the pics without permission, but if you can take a look at Edgar Souders book "Bust Half Fever" he shows pics of the Master Die before any lettering/numbering and then shows working dies that show partial punching of the outside lettering---mind you-it is all punched in reverse....
Take a look at the detail they were able to produce in this close up pic of the reverse bird's head and neck....talk about detail..and this on a coin from 1824 made on a screw press without collars to hold the metal flow, resulting in coins of different diameters from one coin to the next.

JRocco · Veteran Member

Another recent addition.
Back in 1818 they really knew how to put cracked dies to use till the very end....like just after this one...

Bob P · Site Admin

Some nice varieties there. Here are a few Large Cent Varieties I have here.
The first is what they call an 1844/1881 Type. Under the 44 of the date, you can see remnants of an 8 and a 1 which is believed to be the first two digits of the date which was originally punched backward.

This second coin is an 1851 with a repunched 1 on the date.

And the third coin is a nice 1852 Large Cent with a recut 52 of the date.

JRocco · Veteran Member

Great coins and great varieties you have there Bob.
I especially like the 44 overdate.
As the supply of these coins dwindles and makes their way into various collections, these varieties are getting more and more popular and harder and harder to find.
Here is a good challenging mystery for a variety geek like myself.
With just this reverse can you ID this coin??? Type-Year and Variety?