Deep orange with steel mottling covers nearly the entire obverse while the reverse is essentially full mint red with just a few microscopic flecks in the field. Boldly lustrous and quite attractive, this piece shows only a few tiny marks at the E of UNITED and just after the final A of AMERICA. The surfaces are otherwise nearly immaculate.Struck from a middle die state for the variety, this coin shows flowlining and slight distortion in the peripheral fields. The spur over the U in UNITED and the small cud beneath the date present in earlier states are no longer visible, but the rim cud that later forms at TES is not yet formed, either. This is Grellmans Die State-d.This is another late date with a large grading population in high grade, but for the variety the situation is quite different. This piece is tied for second finest in the Noyes Census and was described in 2009 as tied for CC#1 in the Grellman records. Ted Naftzger recognized it as special long ago, this being among his earliest purchases, and like several other superb cents in this sale, he held it in his own collection for decades.
