I just picked up a second Die State VI S-223. It has rougher surfaces than the last, but the price was right and it's still very rare in the terminal Die State.
This appears to have been edged twice. Once obverse up and once reverse up. So far I haven't been able to get a good photo of the edge showing the overlap.
Once again I'm in search of an elusive S-121a. Thankfully this is not baseball since I already have three strikes winding up with gripped edge S-121s which were called plain.
That's why I'm hoping this time will be different. The seller did not attribute it and when asked, refused to claim either because of the inability to tell the difference. I like a dealer who knows his limitations. I'm hopeful because the gripped edge is usually pretty obvious, though not always.
Give me a moment because at first glance it could be a 1793 which is often counterfeited or modified from other dates.
If real. it appears to be Reverse L of 1793. The 7 being a touch closer to the 1 than the 9 and the E about even with B and R makes it look like the least likely candidate, the NC-6 with I and the upright of R under or almost under beads. Chances of it being real and properly attributed by me are slim, even for a fifty year old purchase. I can state that if real, it was minted no later than early 1794 before they started reducing the space between LIBERTY and the top of the portrait.
In this case, a shot of the edge could reveal if it has an Edge of 93 and provide additional evidence useful for attribution and authentication. Of particular interest is the leaf following DOLLAR though any strong lettering is helpful.
Probably not the NC-6 because the subject appears to have the Upright of B under a bead unlike NC-6 which is between beads. SO at this point, none of the obverses appear to match after initial examination. The leaf pair at the lowest left clearly overlap eliminating Reverse K where each leaf is separate from the other. I'll start looking at 94s for possible matches for altered dates. Because of the position of the R almost entirely left of the front of the hair, only Obverse 1 of the 1794s is a candidate and it is equal in rarity to the 93s. Possibly an early S-14? Before the die crack becomes solid?
It's definitely a 93. key features are the small font size used for LIBERTY, nothing in 1794 was that small, and the junction of the hair and forehead is below the Y. The farthest right the junction gets in 1794 is centered between the T and Y on the heads of 93. It does get that far right in 1795 but then LIBERTY is right down against the head. I'm thinking S-13. I don't think it is 14 because on 14 the T leans definitely away from the R and this one doesn't. I don't think it is NC-6 because the ER seems lower than the B, on NC-6 they are all on the same line, also I think the T is too close to the r to be NC-6. That leaves 13 and 16. I wish I could see the beads above LIBERTY that would clinch it, but the top of the E is usually missing on S-16 and it is present on this coin which tends to make me go to S-13.
I had excluded the S-13 because it appeared that the I and the upright of the B were dotted by dentils rather than between dentils as on the S-13 and what appeared to me as the 7 being a little closer to 1 than 9, at least more so than the even spacing of S-13. But all that could be an illusion or a misinterpretation of PMD as dentils. From a strictly statistical sense, the S-13 would be most likely at R4-. I certainly don't find any obverse candidate which is a slam dunk. I can't wait to see an edge shot.
My problem is I can't see the beads in the image I see some things bu can't tell if they are beads or edge damage/corrosion.
I just picked up this S-213. While damaged severely on the edges, the surfaces are nice. But this intrigues me because I do not see the usual die cracks through the denominator. Noyes indicates he has not seen either the perfect Obverse or the perfect Reverse of Breen State I or even the weak parallel breaks with the perfect reverse of Breen State II. His 1bAb matches up with Breen State III. After looking at it several times, I still do not see any breaks in the denominator, but I do see what might be a trace of the break from the foot of the upright of R into the fiekl, though it could just as well be PMD. This would make it either a rare Breen II or very early III. The obverse breaks closest to the portrait are there and a hint of the third parallel crack. The fourth I cannot see. I also cannot see any hint of the clash of LIBERTY usually seen by Die State III.