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The THREE 1795 flowing hair dollar reverse varieties
tradedollarnut
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Usually classified as just two: the 3 leaf and 2 leaf reverse varieties, closer examination shows there are actually three varieties each containing a blend of attributes of the others. They are the 2 leaf delicate leaf variety, the 3 leaf delicate leaf variety and the 3 leaf bold leaf variety. Below are pictures of each:
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Henceforth, in my mind, the THREE varieties shall be known as the small, medium and large leaf variety
I'll bet if you look some more you'll find others.
Interesting distinctions. However, current designations of 2-Leaf and 3-Leaf varieties refer to the leaves below the wings, not the ones above. And the leaf count above is not always the same as below. Gotta go slowly here...
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
Andy - I’m saying that there are sub varieties for the three leaves and that the number of leaves below the eagle’s wings does not adequately describe what variety the reverse is. A more accurate description is what size are the leaves over the Eagle’s head.
Because the three varieties are a blend of attributes from each other, this leaf size designation should be adopted
Understood. I'm with you on creating new sub-types. It's just important that they are compatible with the pre-existing classifications.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
Yup! There are at least as many varieties as there are (individually,
Hand-cut) die pairs used to strike coins.
Of course, they can be grouped into major, minor, and as fina a distinction as an observer desires.
Awesome coins! Glad you're looking at them closely and noticing interesting stuff
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
PS: there are excellent reference books on this subject 😉
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
Why? If 2 leaves or 3 leaves doesn’t tell you which reverse it actually is, why not use small medium or large leaves to actually nail it down?
If you really want to nail the variety down, you refer to Overton - EDITED TO SAY OOPS!, I THOUGHT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT HALF DOLLARS! -. For a less granular classification, you go to the Red Book or to the PCGS "Major Varieties", which are probably the same. What you're talking about doing now is adding new "Major Varieties". That's fine with me as long as it doesn't create conflicts with the "Major Varieties" that have already been designated by the Red Book.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
Perhaps this distinction is as "minor" (?) as the OBVIOUS HUB CHANGES (sub-varieties ?) found in the $T series that are dismissed by the "experts" as nothing!
The photos show there is a lot of variation in the upper leaves - cool.
How does this classification of reverses map to the ~19 BB- die pairs?
1795 $1 B-7 BB-18 3 Leaves
1795 $1 B-19 BB-19 3 Leaves
1795 $1 B-6 BB-25 3 Leaves
1795 $1 B-6 BB-25 Missing Leaf
1795 $1 B-12 BB-26 3 Leaves
1795 $1 B-5 BB-27 3 Leaves
1795 $1 B-22 BB-29 3 Leaves
1795 $1 B-3 BB-11 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-11 BB-12 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-9 BB-13 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-4 BB-14 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-8 BB-15 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-20 BB-16 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-18 BB-17 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-2 BB-20 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-1 BB-21 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-10 BB-22 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-16 BB-23 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-13 BB-24 2 Leaves
1795 $1 B-21 BB-28 2 Leaves
from
https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1795-1-3-leaves/6852
https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1795-1-2-leaves/6853
.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
dollars
Oops! Back to the drawing board! LOL
We'll have to look at all of the varieties to see if they all fall neatly into the proposed categories. Talk later. (:>)
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
Fwiw, this all came about because I was looking at the Eliasberg coin being sold by Legend Auctions tomorrow night...and I mistakenly thought it was a two leaves because of the more delicate size of the upper leaves. When I saw it was a three leaves, I started researching images to see what the nuances of each were and decided that although those leaf numbers were easy to determine at first glance, they didn’t tell the full story.
FWIW: Thank You. What you have done is TRUE NUMISMATIC RESEARCH. I appreciate that more than looking at your expensive coins.
There are still many discoveries to be found and more research is needed in many series. Most of us tend to look at a coin and take its design for granted. Others, break things down into such small details that many advanced numismatists either get confused or don't care. I experienced that last week looking at all the different reverses on a 1988 Lincoln cent!
All of these variously different die varieties (from hand made dies) are easily attributed using this online tool I created back in 2005:
Attribution Wizard
Be careful.....if you ever decide to look into the nuances of the Early Dollars that followed the Flowing Hair dollars, you will also have to encounter different sizes of lettering and different sizes of dates!
We are allowed to grow six weed plants on our property. That’s exactly how I classify my types
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
This sounds interesting! After it’s all hashed out it might be interesting to see this written to be published, an article or two, in one of the numismatic publications to include plenty of references as noted in the above posts.
I believe the die pairs have been known for quite awhile.
This is more about how the upper leaves vary and if that is useful for attribution.
@cardinal's Attribution Wizard uses the lower 2 or 3 leaves, plus the lower berry counts, after filtering for a few obverse features.
This seems to work well.
For rather worn coins, it is nice to have multiple paths for attribution, in case some of the key features are not visible.
Lists of features in the book are helpful for this.
Not really a problem for the coins @tradedollarnut tends to buy, though.
At first blush, the Large Leaf variety seems very scarce. There are about 2 dozen images on Coin Facts of the three leaves and only 3 were Large Leafs
It appears so at this time, but if ALL of the Coinfacts photos were restored online, you would see many more of the Large Leaf varieties. (The BB-18 variety is quite common.)
Sad that we lost that resource
When CoinFacts debuted, you had to pay for it as a subscription. Now it’s free, but I’d gladly pay that fee to get access to all of the photos.
It was such a good resource for my work on Liberty Seated half dime die pairs that I realized it would be bad if it disappeared (which tends to happen with free resources on the internet).
So I wrote some software and downloaded all of the LS half dime photos before their index pages on CoinFacts disappeared.
(I did it over a couple of late night sessions so that it would not affect response performance for other users).
It's fun to play with the available online resources to explore the die pairs without owning the book with all the answers.
I attempted to reduce the die pair info in @cardinal's Attribution Wizard into a table:
My hasty comparison of the photos suggests there are 12 Reverses.
Along with the 2 or 3 leaves under the wings, it seems fairly simple to count the berries and their locations
to identify the reverses, although there are some ties.
To break the ties, it helps to look at various leaf positions.
The upper leaf sizes are interesting, but similar to counting berries, they are not conclusive to identify all the reverses.
And they are not as simple to describe as berry counts.
For example, see above my comparison of BB-16 and BB-20, using photos from @cardinal's Wizard.
The upper leaves are very similar, and the berry counts are the same.
Yet there are several differences, such as the position of the leaves near A3 (last A in AMERICA).
I have been trying to get in touch with whomever produced this attribution guide! I quit trying a year ago. Please read my opinion (PM) and I would appreciate a reply as I'm willing to work on some things with you using actual coins.