I really like this "collecting New Orleans gold by variety" stuff

Longacre

I was taking a look at the new Doug Winter book on New Orleans gold. I am systematically going through my massive collection and checking the attributes of my coins against the information in the book. I like how Winter has included variety information in his new book. Although I don't think that collecting N.O. gold by variety will catch on, I do find it interesting to check my pieces against what he has in the book. Let's take the 1852-O quarter eagle as an example. Winter says that there are two varieties:

Variety 1: The date is placed fairly high and slants slightly downward to the right. The 1 is close to the neck, while the 2 is distant. The mintmark is impressed normally. The tip of the fraction bar is aligned with the middle of the mintmark and the arrow feathers pierce it at the top left. This is the scarcer of the two varieties (cha-ching ).

Here is a coin that I own. I think it is Variety 1:





Variety 2: The obverse is the same as on Variety 1. The mintmark is very heavily impressed and appears to have been entered by hand in New Orleans. It is positioned slightly to the right (or does he mean left?) of the end of the fraction bar. The arrow feathers do not enter the mintmark. Here is an example on the DW site that I believe represents Variety 2:

ABC123

Very Nice--Enjoy !

IGWT

You're in deep when you collect by variety. You need one of each, Longacre. And once you have one of each, you'll need at least a couple die states for each variety.

Longacre

Geez.. when I post a thread about New Orleans gold, you can usually hear the crickets chirping. When I post about varieties of New Orleans gold, the silence is deafening. At least I got two sympathy posts.

Leiana

I think it's cool, Longacre. I just don't have anything intelligent to add.

I like to contibute meaningful posts to threads.

-Amanda

RYK

Life is short. Go for the variety set. Who knows? If QDB finds out about you doing so, he might write a book about it.

1798CentCollector

Very nice post Longacre. Post a few more pics. Varieties are the "spice of life' as many LC collectors are well aware.