This is for @Paddy54 and anyone else that would like to chime in. I picked up the below 1833 Capped Bust Half Dime raw at a show yesterday for $10. At the time I thought it might be the LM-2 die marriage which has a rarity rating of R-6 (13-30 known). But the coin in an AG-03 grade was a little too worn to be sure of that with just a loupe, especially since Reverse S looks so much like Reverse T. So, I bought it and today put it under the 10X - 30X stereo microscope and did a lot of comparisons. Now, I'm almost certain it is the LM-2. Care to take a stab at the attribution?
For ten dollars a very good find. I would have purchased the coin also. Thanks for sharing it. Good luck.
As it turns out, I think I erred in the attribution. LM-2 and L-1 share Obverse 1 and this coin's obverse is definitely Obverse 1 which was only used with Reverses S and T. The differences between the Reverse T (for the rare LM-2, R-6) and Reverse S (for the relatively common LM-1, R-3) are pretty small for even a high-grade coin and are really tough to discern on a worn specimen like this one. But the tells that make this Reverse S and therefore the LM-1 are: The tip of the feather is just right of the tip of the flag of the 5. On Reverse T, the feather tip is slightly right of the tip of the flag. The tip of the stem is just right of the junction of the serif of C2. On Reverse T, the tip of the stem is in line with the serif. So, I just got ahead of myself in my excitement.
Let me look this over just returning from some technical difficulties. So haven't been able to read over all messages and tags. I too when junk box fishin... will post my catches.
Here's two half dimes fished from the junk box. I have <$38 in them and did have the luxury of being able to make an educated guess as to the die marriages. Yes true damaged and woren show me a better specimen that's reasonable for an R 3 & R 4 marriage.
@Publius2, we've all had that rush of excitement when we think we have a rare one! With worn coins, I have a trick... using Gimp (free image editor), I open your image. Then I paste a new layer containing a known reverse (in this case, Rev S from my own 1833 LM-1 in MS64). I resize and rotate until the images are pretty darn close to being oriented the same way. Then on the Layer dialog I move the Opacity slider back and forth to fade the images in and out and see if the visible devices match up. The image below is a screen cap, with both reverses visible. Any misalignment is because I was too lazy to make them "perfect." My rev S was rotated counterclockwise, as you see with the dark background. I created a video file of the opacity changing back and forth but it's too big to upload to this forum! There is of course a third reverse that was married to obverse 1: rev W is found on the LM-6, which is another R6 coin. But you probably eliminated it because the scroll ends right at the first leg of the M and the other reverses end closer to the point of the M.
