Just sharing couple of old U.S. coppers I snagged for the collection. The 1819 I bought as a VG 10. It is a soft strike. What attracted me to it is as an early copper it has somehow avoided too many dings and seems to have been struck on a decent copper planchet, two things unusual to find in 200+ yr old coppers. The 1854 was just a nice circulated large cent, also relatively free of nicks. Looks like there may have been a very old cleaning. I find it difficult to pass up classic ladies like these that have weathered the years well.
Awesome. Thank you. My reference books are basic. I really need to spend some money on expanding my reference materials.
I have all the reference books I need, the only problem is, finding the time to research each coin, note, commemorative, etcetera, in our collection and adding them to our inventory. A tedious but enjoyable endeavor.
@Lawtoad - The books I use are The Cent Book 1816 - 1839 by John Wright for the middle dates, and U.S. Cents 1840 - 1857 by Bob Grellman for the late dates. They are both outstanding references for identifying varieties and rarity.