Looks like a fake to me, the edge lettering is a nice touch but the coin itself doesn't look right. The obv looks fake and the reverse looks worse. Sorry but it's fake. Better luck next time. http://www.ebay.com/itm/1796-Draped...768946?hash=item3d369572b2:g:IV0AAOSwCU1YpIcP
You realize if your "coin" was real, it would be a 5-digit coin...? Sorry, but blurry pics and "got this from a buddy" somehow tells me it's a Chinese counterfeit even w/o taking a closer look at it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
A real one carries a value of approx $5.000 in VF condistion. You should take it to a coin dealer you trust an see if they can explain to you why it is a fake or not. Use it to learn from, But i'm sorry to say you prognosis does not look good so far.
It's not as if the die pairings of this issue are unknown. There are six varieties known. This is not one of them. Only one of the four obverse dies had a date which didn't touch the curl and the date on this coin is too far from, and too high relative to, the curl for that obverse. It's also too wide. Further, the two top curls of hair on the "correct" coin are directly below the E and R, not the B and E as shown on this coin. That obverse was paired with two reverses. Given the appearance of the two leaves under the first T in STATES, the coin shown here could only be the Small Letters variety, B-3/BB-62. Only two B-3's are known, for the record. Here's one of the two, from PCGS CoinFacts: The reverse is actually not a terrible copy of the true Small Letters Reverse B, which as a matter of record was used in the issues of 4 different years of production (which is why the counterfeiters probably had access to one): 1795, 1796 (three varieties this year), 1797 and 1798. It has the typical problems of appearance which indicate it as immediately fake to the educated eye - denticle structure, letter serifs, too much/too little relief in inappropriate places - but the gross feature locations are pretty accurate. It's a counterfeit, beyond any doubt.
