1838 Closed claws quarter

coindoc2

I just purchased a nice 1838 Closed Claws seated quarter at the ANA in Denver. Anyone know about the current rarity of this variety? Briggs listed it as very rare, but it's been a number oif years, and I haven't seen any before.
Thanks.

roadrunner

There's probably a more current survey than the 1993 LSCC. But at that time the '38 CC was about 4X rarer in club member hands than the very available '38 OC.
That would suggest it's certainly not rare. Maybe it falls in the 200-500 known range.

Seems to be somewhat equivalent to these other varieties: 1847 compass pt rev, 1847 DDR, 1858 compass pt rev, 1848 triple 1 - double 8, 1860-0 broken O.

I'd also say that the variety might fall inside the range of some of these dates: 47-0, 58-0, 59-0, 67, 68, 69-s, 73 NA.
Since most seated sets are date sets it's hard to say exactly what a lesser demand variety is worth. There are probably a lot of unattributed ones still out there.
The 1839 very long claws is the best of these "clawed" varieties. If these 38 and 39 ND coins weren't so plentiful there's a good chance most better varieties would
have been cherried already (ie like a 43-0 Lg O for example).

coindoc2

Thanks for the great review. It's nice to have so much info available so quickly! As a dealer, I haven't seen vry many nice 38's in the last few years. I am still sorry I sold my 39 Long Claws in NGC 62 a while back. It was really prooflike (as have been all of the hig grade examples I've seen, which led me to believe it may have been struck in limited numbers. It didn't get the attention I hoped it would at auction.
Gene