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首席收藏网 > 数据中心 > Stack's Bowers and Ponterio > SBP-苏富比2016年2月纽约波格集藏III

Lot:3001 1793 Liberty Cap Half Cent. Cohen-3. Rarity-3. Mint State-65 BN (PCGS).

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USD 400000

SBP-苏富比2016年2月纽约波格集藏III

2016-02-10 08:00:00

2016-02-10 18:00:00

USD 446500

SBP

成交

“This emission of the half-cent may be considered as the first coined by our government. It possesses, we think, on that account, a very peculiar interest. ... They are rare, as it is difficult to find them in a good state of preservation.” — Dr. Montroville W. Dickeson, 
The American Numismatical Manual, 1859 This coin may have been the first half cent the person who saved it ever saw. Turning it over and finding that its denomination was a half cent, perhaps the person who set this coin aside recognized it as something different, not at all like the British halfpence and other familiar coppers that had been seen in Philadelphia pockets for generations. Struck in the summer of 1793, before the first appearance of the Liberty Cap cents in the City of Brotherly Love, its design was inspired by Augustin Dupre’s Libertas Americana medal, struck in Paris a decade earlier at the behest of the most famous of all Philadelphians, Benjamin Franklin. As Philadelphia was a relatively small city choked with government officials and VIPs, the person who preserved this half cent may have recognized the inspiration of Franklin’s widely-distributed medal. Perhaps that’s even the reason this coin was slid into a pocket to be saved. Though its color has mellowed since the summer of 1793, this half cent has otherwise changed little since its moment of discovery. A corona of mint red surrounds all design elements, from the beaded perimeter to the intricacies at center, colorfully shadowing the lettering and devices. The reverse shows more red on its left side than its right, particularly abundant between the left branch of the wreath and the legend that surrounds it. A hint of pastel blue rises from the tops of the letters of LIBERTY and surrounds the date numerals. The mellowed fields display even and rich chocolate brown, identical from obverse to reverse, covered in sedate but profound original frosty cartwheel luster, notable on both sides but even more evident on the reverse. A textured band inside the obverse rim shows some of the inherent planchet fabric, sometimes called planchet chips but instead just a portion of the planchet whose natural surface was not completely obliterated by striking pressure. The natural planchet character is most notable at the right side of the obverse, though less apparent portions are seen in the obverse’s southwest quadrant. A single notable planchet defect hugs two beads at the border behind Liberty’s cap, incorrectly called a “spot” by Breen, distinctive for its topography, not its color. The fields are free from significant impacts of any kind, and a single minor rim nick above A in STATES on the reverse is now only visible in photographs, having been hidden nearly entirely in its current encapsulation. The strike is firm, eliciting cheek relief from the greatest depth of the obverse die that gives Liberty’s profile superb detail and an elegant appearance. The hair and face are beautifully presented, and light flowlines retain strong luster within the intricacies of the design. Finely rendered veins among the leaves of the reverse wreath, rarely seen on even high grade specimens of this type, are prominent here. The oblong centering dot was cut deeper into the die than the letters of the denomination that surround it, letters which are never seen fully struck but appear well realized on this specimen. The die state is typical, with the central reverse showing some fatigue, often called rust but more properly termed spalling. The fine chips lost from the center of the reverse die manifest here as microscopic mounds or pimples that extend from beneath TES of STATES across the top of the wreath’s interior and over much of the right side of the denomination. Considered a middle die state, this is a bit later than Breen’s state II but earlier than his state III. Manley lists but a single die state for this variety, with a perfect obverse and a “lightly rusted” reverse. The population of Mint State 1793 half cents is an infinitesimal proportion of all survivors. While PCGS has assigned a Mint State grade on 29 occasions, Breen’s Condition Census includes just 21 Uncirculated pieces and is full of evident duplication. The more stringent Condition Census listings published in William Noyes’ Penny Prices and Jack Robinson’s Copper Quotes by Robinson include just twelve and nine specimens respectively in Mint State, a grade defined perhaps more strictly by those parties than by the grading services and others. Though the MS-65 grade has been awarded by PCGS on five occasions, PCGS CoinFacts recognizes the duplication implicit in this number, estimating the total population in MS-65 and better at just four pieces. Two discrete specimens have been graded MS-66 BN, the Missouri Cabinet Cohen-4, ex Earle (1912), that brought $920,000 and the McGuigan Cohen-3, ex. T. James Clarke and Charles Williams, which last sold at public auction in 1950. The only two PCGS MS-65 coins to change hands publicly are the Alvord-Green-Missouri Cabinet:1 coin and this one, last offered as Missouri Cabinet:4.  The provenance of this piece has been a point of confusion for decades. The 1905 Charles Morris sale (lot 857) and the 1918 Allison W. Jackman sale (lot 851) included the same high grade 1793 half cent from these dies, a coin that later ended up in the Virgil Brand Collection. The quality of the photographic plates featuring that 1793 half cent are not particularly good in either sale, but the Jackman catalog notes that the Jackman coin and the Morris coin are one and the same. Virgil Brand acquired the Jackman coin, and a decade after his death it was consigned by his brothers, Horace and Armin, to Burdette G. Johnson of St. Louis. Johnson’s consignment inventory, confirmed by researcher Michael Spurlock, describes the coin as “olive, slight dent behind head,” a reference to the planchet chip near Liberty’s cap and a firm connection to the present specimen. The confusion between this piece and the other Missouri Cabinet specimen appears to have begun in the Walter Breen/Jon Hanson Condition Census, published in the Breen half cent encyclopedia in 1983. The Breen/Hanson listing cites the Morris-Jackman-Missouri Cabinet coin as “identifiable by a tiny mark on the rim of A of STATES,” a characteristic seen on this specimen but not on the other 1793 Cohen-3 from the Missouri Cabinet. Unfortunately, that source proceeded to describe the next piece on the census, the Missouri Cabinet duplicate, as showing “a small spot below cap,” another unique characteristic of this piece that served to confuse the two Missouri Cabinet specimens forever after. Though the Missouri Cabinet cataloger prepended the Morris-Jackman-Brand pedigree on the second Missouri Cabinet coin, based on documentation and photographs, it is evident this is the coin sold in the 1905 Morris and 1918 Jackman sales. The debut half cent issue was recognized as a rarity even as half cents still circulated. In 1855, in one of the first major numismatic auctions held in the United States, the Pierre Flandin sale, collector Winslow Howard paid $7 for a lot of two half cents of 1793, a stunning sum less than 60 years after the coin was issued. As interest and knowledge blossomed in the late 1850s, collectors found that few high grade specimens were around, and the most dedicated seekers continued to pay strong premiums for the best examples. Today, we know no 1793 half cent was preserved by William Strickland for the collection that became known as the Lord St. Oswald collection. Unlike some other issues, the 1796 half cent among them, no notable high grade pieces appeared from English or European sources in the 20th century. Not a single specimen is known today with a preponderance of its mint color. Since few were saved in 1793, most modern survivors were plucked from circulation by the small number of numismatists who began to divide rarities from common issues in the decade before the Civil War, resulting in a collectible population today that is almost entirely in circulated grades. Despite their rarity, the half cents of 1793 remain somewhat overshadowed by the cents of that year. They stand on equal footing as the only denominations struck in the U.S. Mint’s first full year of operation. Their histories are similarly robust, and the cents and half cents of 1793 both deserve plaudits as the first years of their denominations. 1793 half cents, like the Chain and Wreath cents of 1793, are rare one-year type coins required to complete a collection by design type. Their desirability transcends the world of copper coin specialists and deserves a pedestal coequal to the other prime rarities of this date.PCGS# 35009.

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