1837 bust 1/2 dime, please grade & attribute

darktone

Kind of a neat half dime I got a while back but I never really paid much attention to it but I thought I would ask opinions on it here. I think I may have been off on my original thinking of this little coin's grade as it's fairly obvious from the picture of the date that the scratches are from rather heavy die polishing and the reverse appears to have a very weak strike and not as much wear as I originally thought. Oh yeah the dates got some doubling or is that repunching? Thank's for you thought's Mike

obverse picture

reverse

date

goose3

Looks VF-VF+ to me and cleaned pretty harshly.
I'll wait for some of the experts to chime in and check back!

darktone

goose3- when I first got this coin I thought as you did but when I took some picture's to post here I noticed that this coin has very heavy die scratches that have given it the appearance of a harsh cleaning and wear. This thing might be UNC.? I will await the opinion of forumn members. Thanks Mike

Trime

Mike,
I am not an expert but I think this is a LM-5 marriage of OBV 2 and MM reverse. It is a large 5 A2 repunched. A common variety of a key date in the series according to Logan and McClosky. Do you have their book? The diagnostics are slightly complicated in that there are three obverses and 4 reverses. L&M do not mention the repunched date for this obverse but it is pretty clear on the 37 and possibly on the 18. Repunched 7 are refered to in Breen (V-1)and for LM-1 but the scroll ending matrix does not line up for the KK reverse as would be the case for the LM-1.
My first impression ofn grade was Au55 but then I decided that the coin has been cleaned and may not grade except as net by ANAC. Despite this it is a nice specimen with little wear and interesting.
I too will await confirmation by true John Reichers and grade.

darktone

WOW trime you are loaded with info! I had this book in my hand at the last show I went to but there was several customers infront of me and while I was waiting my Dad's back problem got too severe and I had to help him out to the car and thought it would be best get him home. Oh well I'll get that book one of these days. I am really stuck on how to put a grade on this one as it looks no question's cleaned from the full picture but when zoom in on the area's that looked clean as in the picture above the flow lines are there until it hit's the heavily die polished area and this area looks undisturbed when viewed close up. I suspect these polishing marks are there because of trying to cover up clashed dies and if you look closely you can see some raised bumps. That twenty cent piece should be getting pretty close to you as I mailed it monday morning at 8:00. thanks mike

darktone

Here's another photo of the same area as the last picture taken a little farther out. mike

ldhair

I don't see any wear on the coin. I't may be MS but it just looks AU in the image. The tone around the stars make me think it was cleaned at some point. I bet the die had a clash and rust problem when it was polished. With all that said I think it's a great looking coin. Thanks for showing it.