half cents C-1 vs. C-2 vs C-3

southmo

I am new to PCGS and posting comments and questions to a forum, so please bare with me. Can anyone tell me what the C-1, C-2, C-3 designations to graded 1835 half cents means? How do I distinquish them? Also, what does the R-1 mean and are there additional R's, i.e., R-2, R-3,...? Thank you.

FC57Coins

Welcome to the boards - I hope you find your stay here enjoyable and informative.

As for C1-3, hell if I know

Actually I don't know - but Im sure someone will come up with the answer before I finish posting. As for R1-5 those are rarity factors of coins. R1 is pretty common and R5 is pretty rare. I'm sure someone will come up with a better response to that one too.

Anyway, have fun. If you find any fantastically toned Morgans, Franklins, or Roosevelts, don't hesitate to send them to me so you won't be bothered with all that dip stuff

Enjoy!

Frank

BigD5

The C numbers with half cents stand for the Cohen numbers, which are the numbers used to differentiate the different varieties found within each date. The R numbers are for the estimated Rarity of a certain coin/variety. The higher the R number, the more rare.

FatMan

Here's a Big Fat Welcome to ya!

You have come to the right place to get answers to your questions.

southmo

Thank you, everyone, for the greetings. I have read your forums for the last 9 months and it has been educational and interesting to say the least.

Regarding this Cohen number for the 1835 Half Cent, where do I find the listing, pictures and attributes of these varieties?

CLASSICS

<< <i>Thank you, everyone, for the greetings. I have read your forums for the last 9 months and it has been educational and interesting to say the least.

Regarding this Cohen number for the 1835 Half Cent, where do I find the listing, pictures and attributes of these varieties? >>

...................hi, and welcome........for more information about the copper coins...there are many books which have been written, where all that information can be found.......check ebay under the books listings, or the coin world newspaper....

toothpuller

Here's a link to Breen's book

MacCoin

C1 draped bust 00-08
C2 classic head 09-36
C3 coronet 40-57

R 1-5 is the Rarity scale

MacCoin

welcome to the board

Conder101

There are only two varieties of half cent in 1835 C- and C2. (I understand that you were speaking generally as to what the C 3"s were.) As BigD5 said the C#'s on half cents refer to the die variety numbers assigned by Roger Cohen in his book The Little Half Sisters. Cohen assigned a number to each different pairing of obverse and reverse dies. In the case of 1835 all of the coins were struck using one obverse die (Obv 1) and two reverse dies (Rev A & . C-1 is the pair 1-A and C-2 is pair 1-B. Some dates have many different pairings. For example 1804 has 14 different varieties from 5 obv and 8 rev dies. He also used a and b on some numbers to indicate subvarieties where the edges are different on coins that hve the same obv and rev dies.

The two best books on the half cent are the Cohen book mentioned earlier and the Breen book shown in the link in toothpullers post. I would recommend the Breen book as being more up to date and with much more background information. It has the disadvantage of having the coins listed by Breen numbers which are not in the same order as Cohen, and Cohen is still the standard numbering system. (Breen does show the Cohen equivalents.) If you do some searching I think you should probably be able to find a better price on Breen than is shown in the link.

The R numbers are a rarity scale based on the one used by Dr William Sheldon in his book on early large cents. His scale has been adopted by the catalogers of almost every of the series in US coins. The scale runs from 1 through 8, with 8 being the rarest with 1 to 3 coins known down to R-1 with over 2000 pieces known. the whole scale is:

R-8 Nearly Unique 1 - 3 known
R-7 Extremely Rare 4 - 12 known
R-6 Very Rare 13 - 30 Known
R-5 Rare 31 - 75 estimated
R-4 Scarce 76 - 200 estimate
R-3 Not so common 201 - 600 estimated
R-2 Common 601 - 2000 estimated
R-1 Very common over 2000

Some series have a slight midification of this scale with different counts, and the Civil War Token collectors use a similar scale with 10 levels.

There is also a scale called the Universal Rarity Scale (URS) that is used by a couple groups. It was originally proposed by Q David Bowers in his books on silver dollars. i belive the error collecting community uses it but basicly no one else does. The URS scale runs in the other direction with the higher the number the more common it is. I believe the scale is
URS-1 Unique
URS-2 2 - 4 known
URS-3 5 - 12 known
URS-4 13 - 36 Known
URS-5 37 - 100 known
URS-6 101 - 300 estimated
URS-7 301 - 900 estimated
URS-8 901 - 2700 estimated
URS-9 2701 - 8100 estimated
URS-10 8101 - 24300 estimated

The URS scale is open ended and the numbers can just keep getting larger but beyond URS-8 they get to be pretty meaningless.