I am posting this as a cautionary tale when attributing well worn Large Cents. This on had me going for a while: I imediatly recognized one of my favorite obverses, the Sheldon 1794 Obverse 19 with the horshoe top curl and no lower curl (at least not back towards the date). The lack of a die crack in the date gave me visions of cherry picking the second known NC-10. The lack of a die crack narrowed down the known choices to the NC-10 or one of the two early die states of S-43. I'll post those reverses here: On this worn example, there is little on the reverse to use to distinguish the two. But one of these is the location of the leaves under D. On the NC-10 the outer leaf is past the upright of D and on the S-43 it is at the right edge of the upright of D. I saw what I wanted to see. perhaps you do to. I looked and looked, but it was more of an impression than something I could hang my hat on. So I put it on my watch list and came back with a fresh perspective. I enhanced the photos and increase contrasts to expropriate the most information I could from the image. But again all I was left with was an impression. Finally this morning, I looked elsewhere for something else to"verify" my find. I came across the differences in the stem to the top berry under D. I think there is enough there to see the difference. Subject S-43 NC-10 I think this confirms that the subject coin is an early die state of S-43 and not the NC-10. Disappointing, but I didn't go crazy BEFORE I bid on the coin this time. I may be slow, but I do learn from my mistakes. Thoughts?
After staring at the original reverse image and your excerpt, I see... a butterfly. No, an evil witch. No, a frog. Wait, are you writing all this down, Doc?
Another difference I was trying to see on the picture was the position of the inner wreath compared to the outer curve of the D. It should be pretty easy to distinguish, but alas, I wasn't able to from the picture. Well, if there were a new NC-10 found, luck would have it that it would be in the same shape as the coin shown.
If it were better, there are numerous differences in the reverses. This is either just past identification with good images or almost past identification with bad images.
