1855 V-4

As promised in Part 6, this post is not about an 1843 or 1847 shattered reverse half dime die. As mentioned in Part 3, I acquired an 1855 half dime in Baltimore almost a year ago.

I had been finding it difficult to find a nice 1855 in my target grade, MS66, for any price. So when a MS65 example appeared in the Stack's-Bowers auction at the November 2015 show, I decided to go for it, and succeeded.

At the time, it felt a little like settling for something less than what I really wanted. But I justified it because it is an interesting specimen. The variety (Valentine-4) has been known for a long time and is not particularly scarce. But this example appeared a bit different than others I had seen.

The reverse die has an obvious crack from the rim at N all the way across to the rim at M of AMERICA. While most look otherwise normal, this one was produced from obviously aging and dramatically clashed dies. It is amazing to me that a die already cracked into two large sections could endure extended additional use including multiple strong clashes without additional cracking. (I do not think I have the sequence reversed: I do not think any die rehabilitation would have left it capable of producing the more normal looking specimens.)

So I figured that if I ever did get an 1855 upgrade, I would keep this one as a good example of an interesting variety in an interesting die state. A shot of the reverse is shown below. A future post will illustrate the earlier die state. Enjoy.

Alan

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