Any chance this damaged 1842 Small Date Large Cent is counterfeit?
jesbroken
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The reason I ask is it seems like the curl above the 4 is a little further to the right and a few other reverse features seem just a little off. Just curious.
Jim
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It is perfectly genuine. The last two digits in the date were placed on the die by hand, that would explain the variance you are seeing.
Member of Early American Coppers (EAC), American Numismatic Association (ANA), and Missouri Numismatic Society (MNS). Specializing in early American copper by die variety.
I'm going to assume it's genuine, however, my limited resources for the Late Dates doesn't show any Small Date varieties where it looks like the end of the hair appears to curl up and away from the date. They show the end of the hair pointing straight or nearly straight down, albeit in different positions relative to the date. Not sure if yours really curls, or if it's something else.
@RLSnapper is much more of a student of the late dates than I am, so he may be able to figure it out for us.
No. Grobrecht placed his dates this way on the large cents and some of the gold pieces he designed.
There are only 2 varieties of the 1842 Small Date. They are N-1 and N-2. They are determined by the tip of the curl pointing down towards the upright of the 4. For N-1 tip points to the center of the upright and for the N-2 the tip points to the right of center of the upright. The cent in question is the N-2 variety...rarity 1. I have attached my AU50 example of the N-2. It is an exact match. Either Small date in AU or above is difficult to find.
Ok, so what appears to be a curl upwards, on the OPs coin, with a little white dot at the end of it, must actually just be dirt or an anomaly of the image.