Unusual 1859 and 1888 Canada Cent Varieties - ID??

candy2012mustang

Can someone ID these Varieties?

1859 - 5 coins
1888 - 1 coin


1. (1859)


2. (1859)


3. (1859)




4. (1859)



5. (1859)



6. (1888) Please note: number 1 8 8 8 are all "doubled" in the date - each pic is each number in order

syl

Your first one is commonly called an 1859 over 8 or 1859 wide 9 over 8 ... written 1859/8 for both. There was no "generic" 1859/8 .. there were actually 13 different working dies that produced them, each of them different. Yours is probably from Reverse die RD5, which was used for approx 2% of the 1859/8 mintage. I would need to see the rest of the coin to tell for sure.

The initial order to the Mint in London from Canada for the very first Provincial Canada coinage called for 10 million one cent coins. Initially, it was thought that all would be dated 1858, but delays, approvals, material set the clock back. Only about 1.5 million 1858's were struck until they were well into calendar year 1859. As a stopgap, before 1859 dies were prepared, they took 13 already prepared 1858 dies and handpunched a larger font 9 over the 8. Handpunching took 2-4 blows with the hammer to fully incise the detail into the die (and through cycles of annealing and hardening), so that's why all those 9/8's look different .. hammer blows and hand-held punches are never exact.

For the same reason (delays and getting well into 1859 mintage year), the rest of the 10 million order needed to be struck with an 1859 date. The master die to make all the reverses was already prepared with an 1858 date, and they needed to use it rather than prepare another. The die hierarchy goes from the master through the matrix to the hub to the working die. They took an 1858 hub and ground down the last raised (relief) digit (the 9) to the same level as the field and then started pounding out working dies missing the last digit. Then each Reverse working die (maybe 200) had a hand-punched same-font 9 punched into the date for that die. Again, since hand-punching required annealing and hardening of the dies between multiple hammer blows (maybe days), every 1859 working die is different in some way. Reverse working dies lasted between 5,000 and 40,000 coins, so you figure it out how many different working dies there were to make 8 million coins.

Your 1859 coins are all narrow 9's (any 1859 that is not a 9/8 or 9/6 is a "narrow 9), although there are some that think that there was a slightly different font used for some called a "bold 9" .. it could just be tired, worn dies. Without seeing the rest of both sides of you r coins, I can't tell you what you have with them and whether they are scarce or not. As I stated before EVERY 9 and most of the 5's in the 1859's are doubled, tripled or quad, if even in a slight way. Very few carry a premium. I would suggest that you get your hands on a copy of the 2011 (65th edition) of Charlton Canadian Coins guide and see how your 1859's compare. In the back are 80 of the 100's of Victoria Large Cent varieties, and about 12-15 of the 1859's (I helped write it).... I think 2 of yours are in there with full-retail prices. Victoria Large Cents, and 1859's in particular, have a great many varieties that are easily seen and have large offsets in their doublings .. there is a very large group of collectors that just collect the varieties, not the normal coins. I, personally, have over 1,000 1859's and over 6,000 Vickies.

ALL 1888's have the middle 8 doubled from the matrices, but the mint frequently repunched 8's over the original 8's as the matrix and hubs wore down. The repunched 8's are all over the board .. high, low, right, left, rotated. It is not common to have all 3 8's doubled or tripled on the same coin (maybe about 1:50), but you'll always find one or two done. It was a large mintage year so there were many coins like yours. It probably carries a 2X premium over another 1888. Get the 2011 Charlton's .. it's a very interesting issue with all the Vicky varieties in the back.

candy2012mustang

Thank you! I found these in a lot of canadian cents - about 250. Around half were Victoria.

I will probably search the rest of the dates for varieties before I sell the remainder of the lot - and put each variety on ebay. I am not a collector, so maybe these would fill spaces in someones collection.

Thanks!

-Kev

bosox

Die RD4 on the W9/8.