1786 Connecticut Copper. Miller 3-D.4, W-2515. Rarity-8. Mailed Bust Right, Scholar’s Head. Fine-15 (PCGS).133.9 grains. A cherry among cherries, this finest known example of the extremely rare 3-D.4 die combination is the Scholar’s Head Connecticut copper to own. Not only is it choice for a Connecticut copper, it is the finest of just three known specimens by a country mile—the ANS-Miller plate example is Good to VG, and quite pleasant but with a slight bend and some pitting on both sides; the 1975 Pine Tree EAC sale coin is About Good and quite rough and brought over $6600 in Stack’s January 2000 Sale of the George Perkins Collection. This example was discovered by Mark Poulin of Connecticut in 1991, an auctioned by Stack’s in 1995, and has been in Robert’s Collection ever since. It, along with the 1975 Pine Tree EAC specimen, display a large, catastrophic die break that took out a large chunk of the reverse die from the 1 of the date to a point along the rim just before the I of INDE. It is one of the largest cud die breaks known in the Connecticut series, and is undoubtedly the reason behind this die marriage’s rarity. Given that only one non-broken state 3-D.4 exists (the ANS coin), the fracturing of the reverse die undoubtedly occurred early in its useful life; the retirement of reverse D.4 paved the way for the today more plentiful yet still quite scarce 3-D.1 die marriage. Dark chocolate brown surfaces are smoothly worn and subtly glossy, with a few trivial contact marks at obverse effigy’s neck, and a few small, serpentine planchet flaws where some minuscule pieces of slag undoubtedly fell away during the planchet production process. AUCTORI is a bit softened by the convergence in its vicinity of a planchet cutter lip, a tiny planchet clip, and the huge, deep die break on the opposing side that stole metal away from the obverse, while the rest of the legends range from bold to fully visible if a bit weak. The Connecticut series is riddled with R-8 and R-9 varieties and as such is not a series for the faint of heart. In a series where many coins are rare but not pretty, and many coins are pretty but not rare, this is one of the extremely rare convergences of both pretty and rare. It is exactly the kind of coin that Robert strove to own, and it is a coin that will help one lucky collector in his or her march to the 300 die marriage mark in the Connecticut copper series.From the Robert M. Martin Collection. Ex Mark Poulin Collection; Stack’s Sale of June 14, 1995, lot 36.
