Having these 2 coins out of the slabs, side by side, I would come to the conclusion that one is not genuine. Is this common for early U.S. dollars to appear so different? Note: the difference in the numbers on the date.
The numbers in the dates certainly look different. Did NGC have holders without those little tabs? Like the one on the left? Just curious.
Numbers can look differently - just look at the bust half series. From these pictures I would question the one on the left - certainly looks tooled. I will have to check closer when I get home.
"A rattler" is a small Pcgs slab like these http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=rattler&_sacat=253&_dmpt=Coins_US_Individual&_odkw=au58&_osacat=11951&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313 hey gained that name due to if you shake the holder the coin actually moves and rattles inside the slab Ngc only started using the tabbed holder's about a year ago
Actually the NGC edgeview holders date back to 2002, but they never really did anything with them. They revived them in 2007 for use with the edge lettered President dollars and then expanded them to all series around I believe 2009. One problem you have in trying to judge those two coins is that they are photographed under different conditions so it is not possible to make a direct comparison. As for the differences in the numerals, there are 32 different varieties 1798 bust dollars and the features of each were punched in the dies by hand so there can be a lot of variation from one variety to the next.
Just a curious question, Do rattler holders hold any more value than a same coin in a regular holder?
Now that we know there are 32 different varieties can we assume at least 32 different dies were used? Mintage was only 327,536. That would be a new die for every 10,000 coins. Anyone know how often the dies were changed way back when? I understand that 50,000+ coins is reasonable for one set of dies.
In my opinion, No. The rattlers, being the first slabs from PCGS, were often said to have been graded more conservatively than todays grading. But over the last twenty years most of them have been picked over and picked over and picked over and anything conservatively graded enough to justify being resubmitted for an upgrade has been upgraded. What is left in the rattlers are those coins that are accurately or even overgraded. And unlike NGC's first slab, which IS valuable, the PCGS rattler was used for three years and there are still enough of them available that they are not worth any premium for the slab.
No, there were 19 different obv dies used, and 20 rev dies. Dies were not always changed in pairs and if one die failed it was just replaced with a different one. Also back then the coins were struck to order and the number struck at any given time depended on the amount of silver a person had depositied. If they had a large deposit for the Bank of the United States they might coin thousands of pieces and use several die pairs doing so. Then they might get a deposit of a hundred dollars worth so they would put a pair of dies in the press and strike off his hundred. But inbetween times the dies would be put back in the vault and when dies were needed again there would be no guarantee tha the same pair of dies would be used together. So some varieties may have had long runs and be common while others had very short runs and are very rare. Most of the obverse dies were only paired with a single reverse. The most prolific was paired with six different reverses. Many of the reverses were paired with more than one obverse. the most prolific reverse was paired with four obverses. (one reverse was actually paired with five but only one in 1798. It was also paired with one 1795, three 1796, and one 1797 obverse.)
Am I misunderstanding something here? If there are 32 different variations of the date on these 1798 bust dollars then does that not mean that 32 different obverse dies were used? I am trying to understand the logic of 19 obverse dies.
He did not say there were 32 variations of the date. He said there were 32 different varieties of the coin. Some of those varieties have nothing to do with the date.
