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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;mackwork, post: 1402282, member: 35676&quot;]You may ask why did I buy a holed coin? Well, it was actually intentional. I recently read an article on the history of the 1861-O half dollar and the New Orleans mint at the start of the civil war in 1861. Then I did more reading on the history of the mint and the half dollars produced that year. From the end of January through February, the state of Louisiana took control of the mint after seceeding from the Union. After February the CSA took control of the mint, and produced coinage through April. There are several die pairs and die marriages associated with the 1861 half dollars, some of which have been attributed to the CSA produced coins.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>After getting interested I wanted to get a piece of the history and managed to find an 1861-O half for $20 on Ebay. The coin had nice detail and was holed. The hole didn&#039;t bother me as it was low cost for the amount of detail, plus a big reason was that I&#039;d like to imagine a confederate soldier, or family member, wearing this holed coin around their neck during the civil war, as a sign of good luck and/or maybe loyalty to the Confederacy. The coin came from a dealer in Tenessee, so maybe it had been kept down south since it was minted.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The sellers pics were good, but on the dark side. After purchasing the coin I saved the sellers pics, and lightened them up on the computer and was happily surprised to see that this was a &quot;speared olive bud&quot; variety WB-104. This is one of the dies associated with the CSA produced coins - a nice surprise and a bonus! </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s the site I used to ID the WB-104 die information:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://blog.davidlawrence.com/index.php/seated-half-dollars-1861-o/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://blog.davidlawrence.com/index.php/seated-half-dollars-1861-o/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.davidlawrence.com/index.php/seated-half-dollars-1861-o/</a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Some New Orleans mint history:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Mint" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Mint" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Mint</a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s my coin:</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s205/mackwork/Coins/1861-O50CCom.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>A microscope shot of the speared olive bud on the reverse of my coin. The arrow points at the WB-104 variety die &quot;spears&quot; shown in the first link above:</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s205/mackwork/Coins/1861OWB104.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Hope I haven&#039;t bored you with all of this, but a lot of my interest in collecting involves the history of the coins. It&#039;s not very often that we know this much about a coin&#039;s history.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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