Possible to tell the variety of this 1819 Large Cent?

[timo16]

This coin was marked as a small date and someone said it was either N-3 or N-4. Possible to tell?

[physics-fan3.14]

I'll wait for Bill to respond... but I can't even hardly see the date in your pics.... that thing is so far worn that it might be really difficult at this point.

[Conder101]

I'm thinking N-4

[BillJones]

I agree. It looks like an N-4.

[timo16]

Thanks for that Bill and Condor. What books do you use to attribute Newcomb varieties?

I found this e-book - http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015038888932;view=1up;seq=5 which isn't a very easy read since it was Newcomb wrote it. I was looking at coinfacts.com and they use "The Cent Book" by Wright as their source. Funny they list N-4 as a "very scarce" coin but others are list it as R-3 but according this site http://www.thehistorybank.com/perspective/may10_4.html , very scarce is R-4.

 

[timo16]

FYI, I paid $2.50 for it.

[BillJones]

I use the John Wright book known as The Cent Book. It is well illustrated and has interesting historical notes.

[DWLange]

Here's another well illustrated resource:

 

http://www.ngccoin.com/coin-varieties/half-cents-and-cents/coronet-head-cents-vscid-48/

[Conder101]

I used Bill Noyes book United States Large cents 1816 - 1839

 

One the middle dates up until about 1834 it is usually faster and easier to use the plates in the book to do a rapid comparison of the subject coin and the varieties to eliminate varieties it CAN'T be. That is a shortcoming of the Newcomb book. The original didn't have plates and the later reprints had actual size plates. The Wright and Noyes books have large clear 3 inch pictures that REALLY help. (personally I think the pictures are better in the Wright book)

[BillJones]

I never bought a copy of Newcomb. I took one look at the line drawings and declared it useless. I've heard old time collectors express their frustrations with it.

 

I have both the Wright book and the Noyes book. To me the Wright book is far easier to use.

[Conder101]

When I started in copper the Wright and Noyes books didn't exist so it was pretty much Newcomb or nothing. Later I had photocopies of Wrights articles in Penny-Wise and Rod Burress's quickfinder. The Burress guide is very good, but lacks plates. It has the advantage of being smaller and light weight so it is easy to carry with you to shows.

 

On the middle dates (thru 34) Newcomb is actually fairly good just a bit tedious. After that you had better be collecting AU-UNC coins to be able to use it. Even then a sizable number of late date varieties identified by Newcomb have been delisted as being misattributions/die stages of other varieties.