Opinions on this Booby Head

relayer

I went $78 and was snipped at $79. I think I wish I bid more

LucyBop

thats what happens when you bring pocket change to the table!

relayer

Lucy, I meant the Booby head coin, not me the Booby head.

coinlieutenant

I hear that if you get snipped you can get it reversed. Dont know why you are talking about that here. Kind of personal

Nothing you can do about getting sniped though...

JohnZ

Well, it's definitely a Booby Head. I grade it VF - lots of wear in the hair, and on the leaves.

Still, it has a nice original color. I love large cents.

This variety is easy to obtain in higher grades. Don't fret. You'll find another one.

Dave99B

You got lucky - it looks cleaned to these old eyes......odd color on the reverse.

Dave

JohnZ

odd color on the reverse.

There's no way to tell for certain, Dave, without seeing the coin in person.

The pic is a scan, which always comes out badly.

agentjim007

I had this on my watch list. I bought a much nicer silly head awhile back for under 40 bucks. This is a slightly better variety but I like my coin alot better than this @ 80 bucks. I was in around the 40 area.

relayer

Yeah I thought it was a great coin @ $40 too where it was all week. At $80 - not so great, so at the price I don't mind getting beat out I guess.

I think the reverse does show evidence of cleaning but it has nice details.

lordmarcovan

Maybe it was cleaned a long time ago, but if so, that doesn't bother me much. Looks like a decent coin. Maybe a nicer one will come your way.

JohnZ

Maybe it was cleaned a long time ago, but if so, that doesn't bother me much.

I agree with Lord Yeti. Many old coppers have been cleaned in the distant past and have since retoned. This is also a part of the history of numismatics. After all, it was once considered de rigeur to clean your coins.

rlawsha

i have been meaning to ask this for a while. What's up with the terms BOOBY and SILLY? Do they call them booby heads and silly heads for a special reason or are those just terms that evolved over the years? I agree the person on the coin has a somewhat silly looking face but, what's with the booby head?

BigGreek

Nice coin. I like the planchet and the strike. Looks like a better VF. May have been cleaned but most were. You should be able to get EF for you money but they are getting harder to find.

291fifth

It's been cleaned. The "red" on the reverse is a dead giveaway.

Conder101

They didn't happen to say which variety it was did they? There are eight diferent Booby head varieties, six common, one very scarce and one very rare. The picture really isn't good enough to actually attribute the coin but it looks like either a N-12 (common) of N-15 (very rare). Both varieties use the same obverse die.

rlawsha, The terms Booby and Silly head are whimsical descriptive terms for two of the heads types used in 1839. The use of those terms dates back well over one hundred years but it isn't actually know for sur who first gave them those names. Thee are five different head types used on 1839 cents, Head of 36 (one variety, fairly common but expensive), Head of 38 (two varieties, both common), Silly head (two varieties, both common), Booby head (eight varieties, six common, one very scarce, one very rare), and Petite head (one variety, common)

BBN

I see nothing on that coin that resembles a booby.

mercurynut