I recently won an 1865 copper nickel three cent piece and I was wondering if anyone had a Breen book to look up varieties for that year. What I am looking for is a heavy die clash on the reverse. And by heavy, I mean like tripled heavy. It is well defined and very obviously a clash, extremely obvious. I originally thought it was a severe scratch but not so, when looking at it I asked myself 'what if it's a die clash' and started looking at it from that perspective. So I quickly flipped it over back to the obverse for orientation to try and understand what I was looking at. It is a full profile of lady Liberty's facial outline. Three times. Shows the bridge of her nose up to her eyebrow and all the way down to her neckline. It is slabbed and no mention of this by a Breen designation. Can anyone help? Cherry-pickers Guide? Breen Encyclopedia? I'm trying for pictures now.
Coming from the top of the far right column going downwards you start with the slope of the forehead, running to her nose, then dipping back in for her lips, the third bulbous portion is her chin, then going back and down through the numeral as her neckline. Very prominent in my eyes, hope the picture shows it well. It's cool the clash is tripled too. I'm like Christmas excited right now.
In hand it looks like three and only one small place along those lines it fades out to just two lines instead of three all the way through.
I can't tell what's going on with the obverse, I see what looks possible for a die crack and there's a possibility I am seeing a portion of a numeral just the right side of the lower right neckline of Liberty, but I'm not sure and can't really look at it in depth any more for the night. I hope someone came track something down for me. Very neat feature I do believe.
Super cool clashes ! Die clashes aren't die varieties; rather, they point to certain die states. Though I think they're cool, die states tend to be in less demand amongst collectors than die marriages.
Not really much to track down. Very few clash die coins make it into a reference book. This image might help you spot where the other parts of the clash should be located.
Well I definitely see the same clash in the reverse of this example so that's cool. However I do not have my coin in hand to compare against this one. Pesky ol work getting in the way of my coin fun this morning. Thanks for the help and info everyone.
I'm a big fan of clash die coins. Some don't care to own them and others may pay a bit extra. Every coin is different. I'm not sure I have ever seen a clash quite like the OP coin. Interesting coin.
As mentioned die clashes are not varieties and typically are only listed in connection with another variety to indicate a die stage of that variety. This is because any pair of dies can clash and result in virtually idential sets of clash marks. Also during the life of a die it may clash, the marks wear away, and clash again etc. All of those would be different states of the same die variety even though they might look different.
