Attractive medium brown covers the devices and blends with lighter brown in the fields and at the peripheries. The surfaces show good gloss and natural visual appeal, undiminished by the scattering of light marks typical of the grade. Some harmless old verdigris is seen around some design elements, most notable below the wreath, and some minor hairline abrasions run nearly vertically on the portrait, most evident on a line from the 8 in the date to T in LIBERTY. A few stars on the left are soft at centers, as is UNITED and the lower left quadrant of the wreath. Guidelines, left behind by the engraver after placing the reverse legend, remain visible at top and base of S OF A. The inner circle, an arc visible inside the denticles above stars 10 through 13, is a similar phenomenon. A die crack above MERICA designates this as Manley 2.0.Unknown at the time of the publication of the Breen half cent encyclopedia, this coin is tied in the PCGS Population Report with the McGuigan coin that achieved top ranking in the Hanson/Breen census. This present specimen was adjudged the finer example by those present at the 2004 Half Cent Happening, where Greg Heim noted that this is a variety "where a nice Very Good is a challenge."
