Nice Little Surprise Hiding in My Collection - Late date large Cent

Thanks to the friendly help of some very knowledgeable Copper collectors I found this nice surprise in my collection yesterday. They identified this late- date large cent as a 1849 Newcomb 16 variety which is rated rarity 5 - a fairly tough variety.

There are some subtle markers which identify this variety, for example tiny spikes off the 'N' in ONE, crumbling stars, and so on. All of which not obvious to me since I do not focus (yet!) on late dates. The spikes are so tiny, that my eyes would have never picked them up.
There are obvious problems, scratches, etc, but overall I am very happy. A scarce coin I did not know I had.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Stuff like this is what makes this hobby really fun. I remember when the CPG first came out. Folks were finding cool coins they didn't know they had.

 

Cherry picking yourself!
neat

 

I love randomly finding scarce varieties in the stuff I bought.

I used to attribute all of my late date large cents, but it turned into a time-consuming hastle with little gain, particularly because I don’t have the most-recent resources. Those most-recent materials (Grellman and Noyes) were inexplicably made in a tiny quantity so they are now uber expensive.

I once found an 1853 N-28, which is an R.4, in nice VF-30 condition. Given the die state, the date and reverse lettering were weak. It sold for $7.50. No one knows how to grade large cents with a weak date. (I had 2 1838 large cents with the weak date variety. Both sold for piddly-pip.)

 

I am surprised at myself that I never bothered to attribute this cent. But, I have not had that it that long, just a couple of years, if even. Also, like you TC, I don't have any late-date cent literature.

It is scarce to rare, but not as 'valuable' as, say an R-5 1794 cent. My guess is that has to do with the fact it is a late-date. Still it is a very pretty coin and actually better than what the pictures show.

Actually, this is not the first scarce coin I cherry-pick out of my own collection: a couple of years ago I found an 1821 Capped Bust Dime, variety JR-2.
That one is R-5+. It just lay around in my 'assorted' coins box for about 25 years....

Moral of the story: always check your coins for possible undiscovered rare varieties!

 

Shame about the scratches but still a nice coin & surprise, congrats!

 

Yes, they are there. Less obvious in-hand luckily. For 50 euros I am not complaining.

 

The reason the print runs are relatively small is because the number that will be sold, at least initially, is also small. Most specialized numismatic reference books are lucky to have sales of more than a few hundred copies, most are less. Secondly the books are not inexpensive to produce and the author typically has to pay for the entire print run up front (in the era before Print On Demand). So if you wanted a thousand copies of your book you had to front $30 to $50K, and then have someplace to store them while they were sold. I don't know how many were printed, but John Wrights excellent book on the middle dates was printed in 1992 and the first printing still hasn't sold out. (and now may never sell out because it is available for free download on the NNP.)