I always see postings about rare large cents. I thought I'd post this one that I got at a coin show this past weekend. This is a TOUGH coin. Sorry about the bad pics... my good camera is in the shop... but you'll get the idea.
Nice! It is indeed a very tough coin. You will have no problem finding a buyer. I picked up an NGC VG8 at the Long Beach show in June and had to pay a steep price for it. It now sits in my Dansco. Lance.
Wonderful example of a very tough coin. Nice planchet. Rim ding will likely not allow it to go into a regular slab, but thankfully that doesn't matter to many collectors of this difficult variety. Neat coin, and one of the few transitional date major varieties I do not own. Thanks for sharing, Matt & hope you are well....Mike
Great coin, Matt! I have a spare slot for that in my Dansco if you need a free place to store it! Guy
Hey, Guy. Did you too discover that Dansco has an extra 1839 slot? Booby, Silly, head of '38, head of '40. WTF is that last one for? I made a little 39/6 sticker for the hole, and gently squeezed her in in place, feeling a little smug but also wondering why a dope like me noticed this, and if I wasn't wrong again. The missus says I've been wrong a lot lately. Lance.
I hadn't actually noticed that, Lance. I just know I have a lot of available holes for coins to move into. Guy
Nice coin, and one which I would love to add to my collection. I don't mid the small rim bump at all. Makes me regret turning down an offer to purchase a nice F15 example back in the mid 80's, for what now seems a very reasonable price.
I read some where that they did it so you could put any other variety into to fill the slot without it being an 1839/6. What surprised me that some of the other more common varieties were not in the book. I stuck my 1817 15 star in a slot in the back. One of the classic head over dates is back there also. Anyway - very nice addition. I still need one also, but so far have not wanted to pony up the bucks. I will eventually to complete the book.
I have always found this coin to be something of an enigma. Popular and high priced but really not that rare. At best it is probably only a low R-4 coin. At one show Larry Briggs had a roll of them, FIFTY 39/6 cents, in his case. He had no problem finding homes for them. It still gets cherrypicked because it is easy to recognize. Frankly it probably has it's high price because there ARE some people that hoard it. It reduces the number of coins available for the collectors and drives the price up. A similar piece is the 1803 S-262. Long listed as an R-5 coin one collector decided it wasn't and decided to prove it singlehandedly. He has proved it, since he has 68 of them now and it is probably also a low R-4 at best andmay only be a high R-3. But since he owns a large fraction of the existing coins it has pushed the price for the coin WAY up over what it would normally be, in fact up higher than what an average R-5 coin would normally bring.
I have a similar opinion of the S-133 which seems to be too common for an R5 rating. I only have two, but I've been oubid for at least three more in just the last 6 months.
Condor, just to follow-up the 20th CQR lists both the s-262 and the 39N1 as R3 rarities. This game is all about demand i guess...
I feel the same way about the 1845 n7 which is still listed as an R5. I have picked up four off ebay in the last 4 months, and let another 3 go by... No way that coin has an upper bound of ~70
