I found an 1859 Canadian cent and am trying to attribute it. What on earth do these varieties mean? http://www.coinsandcanada.com/coins-prices.php?coin=1-cent-1859&years=1-cent-1858-1859
I dont have the answer, BUT.. I can direct you to the website and person who does. Rob Turner. http://www.victoriancent.com/index.html he is "THE MAN" on Vicky Canadian Large Cents.
The 1859 varieties can get confusing. When I had a dozen or so Canadian large cents I started looking around for an album to put them in. Suitable albums for this series are hard to get. I settled for a Guardmaster with brown plastic covers. Actually it's the only type I could find [brand new] at the time. Anyway the Guardmaster is only made with four slots for the 1859. You have the common type which is called narrow 9. I think I paid about $7 for that. Then there is the 9 over 8 wide 9. This is just a wider 9 punched over an 8. I bought one of these raw for $25 marked down from $35. It grades maybe G-6 The third hole calls for a double punch narrow nine #1. This is the one I don't have and I understand it is expensive. Lastly there is the double punch narrow nine #2. I bought one of these slabbed by ANACS and graded G-8 for $80. So as far as my set goes I am just concerned with the above four types of 1859. Some collectors are happy just to have a date set with only one example of each year. The Guardsman album only has spaces for varieties of one other year, 1891. For that year there are 3 holes. All the rest have only one hole per year. For anyone thinking of putting together a set of Canadian large cents I must say it is more expensive than I initially figured.
Rob Turner is one of the foremost experts in the series. But if you really want a comprehensive lowdown on only 1859's, then you should go to Dr. Haxby's site vickycent.com. It will literally blow your mind how many more die pairings and varieties exist.
If you have a copy of the 2011 Charlton (65th edition), the Victoria large cent varieties are in the back ... certainly not all, but just 80 of the most popular, collectible, easily seen examples. I co-wrote that section with a couple other large cent variety collectors. All the coins that you mention from the CoinsandCanada website are in the 2011 Charlton with good pics. If you want to go deeper into the Victoria series, then I recommend Dan Flynn's site ( https://sites.google.com/site/victorialargecentsite/home ) or Rob Turner's book and website/blog listed above. Both Dan and I worked with Rob on his 4 books. Dr Haxby's site is a die-tracking guide, not really a variety guide, and it gets right down deep to the nitty-gritty... extremely valuable but pretty in-depth. For the 1859's there were well over 100 different Reverse dies used and, with the final digit (9) handpunched in, each of those dies struck coins different than the other dies used. The blows with the hammer and punch needed to be repeated 2-4 times after periods of the annealing processes and no 2 blows landed in exactly the same position so anomalies abound. Some of the Obverse dies were used with 6-7 different Reverse dies creating some very scarce marriages, again expanding the variety numbers. Much handpunching to correct individual letters or digits then added to the mix. For the 1859's, you are looking at well over 200 different varieties, most easily seen and some very scarce. For the whole Victoria large cent series, you are looking at over 1000 varieties. BTW, the mention of the 1859/8 above and referenced in the guide, as well as Trends and all guides, is somewhat erroneous. There were 13 different working dies that were repunched with a wide-font 9 over an 1858 made die. Each of these 9/8's are different, again because of the hand-punching multiple times after the annealing processes each time. So there are actually 13 different 9/8's, some on less than 1% of the 9/8's struck. The Reverse dies on all the 1858's and 9's broke at 5-10 times the rate of the Obverse dies because of the intricate vine design and mint presses that were not used to striking thinner(1/3 thinner) bronze planchets than the copper Brit halfpennies. The next striking year (1876) the Brit mint went to thicker planchets (the same size as the halfpenny) and that were more accepted by the public. The 1858 and 1859 Large Cents present a lifetime collecting opportunity for anyone interested in a very affordable collecting venue.
