Rosa Americana Attribution Help
KSorbo
Posts: 126 ✭✭✭
Here are seller’s photos of a Rosa Americana I just picked up on Heritage. I was looking through the Whitman Encyclopedia of Colonial and Early American Coins to attribute the variety, and saw that lack of a period on the obverse after “Rex” ties it to W-1272 Martin 3-D. It appears to be seriously rare, listed as URS-4 (5-8 known). Am I missing something here or am I reading the reference correctly? If I am correct would there be a big premium for this variety?
1
Comments
Not sure if you're missing something. Perhaps the rarity changed. It's full attribution is Martin 3.1-D.6 (which is the only 3-D combination). Martin lists it as URS-8, traditional R-4, which is 76-200 pieces.
Ed. S.
(EJS)
Thank you for your help! Is the Whitman Encyclopedia considered a good reference? It looks like in this case the information wasn’t accurate. I suppose if the varieties in the Rosa Americana series aren’t as widely collected as some of the others, then there may not be as much data available.
I suspect that what happened is that R-4 accidentally changed to URS-4. A minor error in my view, especially since a few auction appearances are cited, suggesting that it would not be super-rare.
Ed. S.
(EJS)