By Jack Riley
The saga continues of “new” counterfeits popping up on the market. In my downtime I enjoy browsing online sites and forums. In my search I stumbled across this 1857 half cent listed by what I would consider an average seller. Plenty of listings, with a number of them being genuine coins.
With only one die marriage being the C-1 for circulation issues, this should be a simple coin to attribute. Bay listing (Top) compared to a PCGS certified example (bottom). Clearly the date doesn’t attribute!
Following this, I set out to find more of the “family.” It didn’t take long to stumbled upon this 1854 example that shares a common reverse!
Both coins share this reverse with a large depression in the “N” and a line through the H of “Half.”
Fellow Proxiblog contributor Jack Young sent an eBay link of a spurious seller, and within the listings, it yielded another date sharing this reverse!
There seems to always be a “new one” weekly!
Because of that, I urge collectors to attribute a coin if they intend to buy it or at minimal ask a second opinion.
Attribution of a coin can be done by anyone, even without books! PCGS CoinFacts app as well as NGC’s variety plus are great tools that show images of many die marriages for most series. Compare your coin to the known varieties and determine if it matches. Many things play a factor such as date position relative to the denticles, star orientation, reverse lettering spacing.
Recognizing these differences will prepare you to attribute tougher varieties!
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