This dove gray near gem is accented by lavender and champagne. The luster on the obverse is satiny, with frost throughout the intricacies. Libertys portrait is well defined, even in the regions of the bust and cap that are often softly rendered. Traces of the underdate are bold as is the clashing that halos Liberty in the fields.The ivory-gold reverse is faintly prooflike. A network of cracks intersects the border roughly every 30 degrees of rotation. A cud covers the denticles left of center above AMERICA, though the crack off the right base of I in UNITED is not as advanced as it becomes in the terminal stage. A pair of mint-made planchet streaks in the lower right field will serve as a provenance indicator for future generations of numismatists.The 1811/09 dimes were struck with an unused 1809 obverse die and the reverse from the only die marriage of that year. While the obverse of the overdate coins displays subtle swelling and clashing, the reverse decays spectacularly, a byproduct of having struck over 115,000 coins by its retirement. This coin was chosen to represent this date in the fine cabinets of Eugene Gardner and D. Brent Pogue and few extant survivors of this mintage match its merits.
