Low Grade but Pleasing 1830 Cent with 'Medium Letters'.

Eddi

The 1830 Medium Letters is a somewhat scarce and sought after variety. It is designated as variety N-6, with a rarity rating of 4. (R-4). In lower grades, it is not too difficult to find. However, in nice VF and better it becomes very challenging, and costly.

I picked up recently this lower grade example for a moderate price (140 euros). Nice surfaces and color, condition F12 or F15, but some minor scratches on lower obverse. Still, it is a nice, pleasing example and "OK" for the money.

One interesting aspect of this coin is how many 1830 LC's are offered as 'Medium Letters', when they in fact are not.
One quick way to determine whether you have a Medium Letters variety is by observing the spacing of the letters in the word STATES, specially at the base of the letters.

I have attached a reverse picture of two 1830 cents for comparison. You will notice how the words are more closely spaced at their base on the 'Large Letters' compared with the spacing on the 'Medium Letters' variety.

ChangeInHistory

Gotta love old copper, not a bad choice.

kaz

NIce looking coin, Eddi. Thanks for the education; I did not know about this variety.

ricko

Nice pictures and informative post. Thanks for the details. Cheers, RickO

Walkerguy21D

Great write up and nice example of this tougher Redbook variety.
With only one Unc example known, and just a handful in XF-AU, this one is about as
nice as most of us would hope to have.