Mysterious yellow Indian cent

shylock

According to the new Judd book the J353 - J356b patterns of 1864 no L Indian cents range from 95% copper/5% aluminum to 90% copper/10% aluminum, with the rare 356b 90% copper-nickel/10% aluminum. PCGS called this one a J355 (90% copper/10% aluminum), but who knows by looking at it? When it sold in Goldberg's 2001 Benson I sale they described it as:

"1864. Pattern Cent. J-355, P-425, Rarity-5. Superb! PCGS graded MS-67. This is one of the prettiest patterns in the sale. Glowing yellow surfaces that boast near perfect fields and devices. A curious pattern issue, the bronze was alloyed with aluminum (either five percent aluminum, 7.1 percent or ten percent, it is impossible to tell from looking at the coins)."


image courtesy of Rick Kay

One thing that is obvious is all these were minted from regular working dies. It has all the common clash marks seen on business strikes from this date (I picked one at random to compare it to from Heritage's archive), and even has a die crack at 5 o'clock at the reverse rim. No special die preparation was involved in minting these. But they may have been intentionally struck more than once, accounting for the wonderful strike on this MS67. It has 2, maybe 3 sets of denticles on the lower reverse.

darktone

That's neat Paul. I like it. mike

Lakesammman

Cool coin and very observant - didn't see that doubling at the show. Why would only the denticles be doubled, unless it occurred early in the hub process??

tjkillian

Shylock - that is one very gorgeous, well-struck indian cent. Please remember to include very large scans for more better viewing.

Thanks for sharing.

Tom

shylock

Tim - good question. I'm guessing the last strike was so strong it covered all other traces of doubling except the lower denticles. Mr. Eureka has a J353 on his site that may have light doubling of the denticles on the lower right side, but it's not nearly as doubled as this one. It looks like the same reverse die -- same die crack, same clash marks -- so I'm assuming the doubling was strike related and didn't exist on the die.

Tom - here's a large obverse and a large reverse.

nwcs

Very nice! Almost looks gold.

Nic

Cool coin. Thanks for the pics. K

bigtonydallas

They should change the lincoln cent composition again to something like this coin. If it is cost effective.

dorkkarl

ttt

just cuz it's so kool.

K S

Lakesammman

Snow notes that the experimentation with Cu/Al was a complete failure since the coins got ugly real fast with handling.

I look at it as a complete SUCCESS since they found out Cu/Al wasn't a feasible combination.

This coin tested out as 7.5% Al, I believe.