Here's a new acquisition that just arrived today courtesy of @physics-fan3.14 I'm very happy with it in hand and would love to hear folks grade input. I say it's about VF30 with evidence of an old cleaning. Love the reverse!
I'd say you and I agree perfectly. I really liked the blues on this one. Here are my pics, to give viewers another angle:
That's a very nice Bust Half. The old cleaning looks to have retoned enough to be Market Acceptable, and I agree with a grade of VF30. Wouldn't expect anything less with Jason's pedigree.
Really cool piece. Would an overstrike separated by three years be an example of the mint repurposing a three year old die or rather an attempt to correct an error made by the engraver?
I would be inclined to think they repurposed a three year old die. Chief engraver Robert Scot died in 1823, so it’s thought that the mint had to overdate many old dies to keep up the pace while being down a chief engraver. Most series have overdates in 1823, 1824, and 1825, possibly for this reason.
Not exactly "repurposed" as the die was never used in 1821...merely an old die pulled off the shelf when needed.
Thank you for the clarification. It is very uncommon for dies to be used and then overdated. After a die is engraved, it is heat treated to harden it before it’s used to strike coins. To overdate a used die, I believe it would have to be heat treated to unharden it, overdated, and then heat treated to harden it again. Two examples of overdates where a used die was overdated are the 1806/5 quarter and the 1827/3/2 quarter. I don’t know if there are others.
VF-30, just shy of XF-40, Nice toning. Old cleaning doesn't detract from the coin's eye appeal for me.
Some of the overdates are more prominent than this one, but any overdate is cool. Really, the only part of the 1 that you can see is the very tip, poking out from the diagonal of the 4. It shows as a little spike near the top left of the 4.
