Perhaps the finest known example of this popular and historic issue, this piece has been miraculously well preserved since it was coined about 1860 from discarded, heavily rusted dies. Its surfaces remain highly original and look nearly identical today to how they would have appeared when first struck, with fiery deep red color and abundant luster. Some mellowing has occurred on the obverse, particularly on the plane below the arc crack in the left obverse field, and some attractive toning highlights of rose and pale blue have gathered at the right periphery. The reverse shows just the merest hints of pale blue around a few leaves at left and near the rim at right, but it is substantially as struck, both in terms of color and quality. The obverse is ideally centered, while the reverse is aligned trivially to 7:00, exposing the die edge in the upper right. The die alignment is about 10 degrees clockwise from typical coin turn. The strike, including at the sometimes weak centers, is particularly bold.The dies that produced this privately-struck piece were initially used at the Philadelphia Mint to produce the obverse of 1803 Sheldon-261 and the reverse of 1820 Newcomb-12. They were found on the location of the First Philadelphia Mint "among general rubbish when the basement was cleaned" years after the Mints 1833 departure from the site, probably in the mid 1850s according to a recollection published in the December 1910 issue of The Numismatist. Today, examples in this preservation are of the highest rarity.
