Hello all, I have this coin and after looking at it over and over again trying to determine I came to the conclusion it’s the reverse of 95 do you the number leaves on the left and the right as well two single leaves at top. I found on multiple listings that this variety is Rarity 5. But also looking at graded just regular variant 1796 they all have the single leaves at the top. How could the regular 1796 be a rarity 5? I must be missing something, still learning these large cents especially the Liberty caps. Very beautiful coins, probably my favorite of the large cents and have only have had a few. Am I right on this one it being the reverse of 95? I’ll add pictures as well. Best regards as always, Travis
The biggest thing is that the “1796 Reverse of 1795” variety is for the 1796 draped bust large cent, not the 1796 flowing hair large cent (what your coin is). Some major varieties have multiple die marriages (PCGS CoinFacts lists 8 Sheldon varieties and 2 NCs that make up the “1796 Reverse of 1795” major variety), which is why some of the coins in your internet search show as R5 and some of them are more common.
Holy smokes! I am laughing at myself I was looking for a few hours at this thing and searching left and right very confused, that makes sense now ha ha. The reason I started inspecting the coin is because the coin was originally sold to me as S-87 which is the doubling of ladies profile but wasn’t really able to see it maybe on the forehead down to the nose but I could also be seeing things. That’s what got me Interested in finding the Sheldon variety. The lady that sold it to me said the coin dealer told her is was the smooth edge variety which I don’t believe is a thing. Thanks for fixing my confusion!
So the dealer said this was a smooth edge variety and I see what he meant. It’s like this all around the whole coin and it’s missing the lettering of the one hundred that it should have.
It really is huh? The sellers pictures were nice but when I pulled this girl out of the bubble mailer today I thought they sent a different coin LOL
It is a S-87, the most common of the 1796 liberty caps. ALL of the 1796 caps have the single leaf 1795 rev and all the 1796's are plain edge. The lettered edges ended in December of 1795 with the weight reduction. The 1795 S-77, 78, and some of the S-76's were made in 1796 after the weight reduction on plain edge planchets and then they started the 96 caps. They struck about 109,000 caps and then in July began the 96 draped busts. Oddly although the made more than 3 times as many 1796 Draped busts, they are significantly rarer than the 96 caps. When I started collecting them there was only one variety of draped bust lower than an R-4 and most of them were R-5's. 20 of the 35 varieties are STILL R-5 or higher. There are now 5 varieties that are down to R-3, and 10 that are R-4. The 1796 draped busts are not easy to collect by variety.