Just got this in the mail today. I was just trying to fill a hole in my US Type Coin book. After getting it reasonably on ebay I searched CT for 1809 half cents, and found this post: http://www.cointalk.com/t191107/ It was very helpful, but my eyes are inexperienced with half cents. I was only able to find incomplete photo galleries of the 6 possible varieties for this year, and am hoping for some insight with attribution. Someone tell me it's Cohen-1, and super rare. In the CPG, the variety is also known to have 2 known cuds, which is interesting. Please help. Either way, one less hole to fill. Thanks for the help, and I hope everyone like this as much as me.... the patina is awesome, with the scatterings of deep green. I don't think my photography has done it justice.
ok... can you point out some identifying features that point you in this direction? Or is this just a guess? Just asking.....
Don't have my references in front of me at the moment but I can remember most of the features that lead me to that conclusion. C-1 has the point of the leaf below the center of A3. This coin has it below the left foot. C-4 and C-6 have the leaf point below S2 far past right. This one has it just slightly past the right edge of the S. I don't remember what eliminated C-3 but there was something definite. I'm not sure but I think it has the left edge of the curl on the obv over the center of the 0. this coin has it further right. That leaves C-2 and C-5. On C-2 the point of the leaf is below the right edge of the right foot of the F in OF. On C-5 the point of the leaf is right of the foot of the F. This coin has it right of the foot making it C-5.
Conder101, You cited all that without looking at references? That is truly impressive. You must have a photographic memory, at least partial. People normally don't remember that much detail.
Wow! Excellent info, sir! Thank you very much. I paid about $36 for it, and it's occupying a place in my US Type Coin album. These early coppers are very intriguing.
I had the references when I attributed the coin. All I had to do was remember why I had eliminated each variety. There were only six varieties for this year and I had done the attribution earlier in the day, plus I had the images above to jog my memory. I've been attributing coppers for a long time so I have a methodology for approaching them. Add those together and the fact that I could remember isn't that surprising. You'll notice that I wasn't too sure about the C-3 (I checked turns out I did remember right) and I couldn't remember whether C-2 or C-5 had the point of leaf past the right foot of the F so I checked the pictures up above.
Is it just me, or is that the most attractive porous classic head I've seen in a long time? I guess it helps when you have nice detailing on there.
Thank you! It was very tricky to get the lighting to show the green... I like it a lot. What is one worth, attributed? I looked and found one in EF-40 go for around $200 but being around G-4, does that just bring it back to base value? I'm obviously not out to sell it again, but rather curious.
My problem tends to be that I know I have the book, but i don't remember where it is. Then you have the problem that the book I want never seems to be where I am. Normally I would have attributed the half cent using my copy of Breen's half cent book but it was at home. So I grabbed a copy of the Davy's half cent collection from Goldbergs Auctions and used that.
