1801 Large Cent 1 Over 000

It helps if you know some of the history around what was going on in Congress with regard to the Mint at the time. There was a lot of criticism that the Mint was too expensive and was producing too few coins. There were several calls for the elimination of the mint and turning over the production of coinage to private firms on a contract basis. (Apparently they had learned nothing from the experiences of the states with their private contract coinages, or the disaster with the contract coinage for the fugio cents. Of course some of the Congress men had business contacts with people who stood to profit if the int was abolished.)

The Mint had barely survived two attempts already to close it down and the mint employees were severely depressed not knowing from week to week whether they would still have jobs. Under such circumstances quality control understandably plummeted. Dies were made in batches and in 1801 a batch of five dies were produced that all had the fraction as 1/000. Die steel was scarce and expensive though so the dies would not be scrapped out of hand. One of them was recognized and corrected in 1801 (S-221) three of them were used as is in 1801 (S-218 & 219, S-220, and NC-3) and one was used as is in 1802, although it was paired with two obverse dies. One dated 1801 (S-223) and one dated 1802 (S-228). The die used for 1801 NC-3 was lated corrected and used in 1803 to strike S-249. Your coin is S-223 the 1801 struck in 1802 after the S-228 combination.

WD1040 wrote:




Yep, it's mine. Would you like more pictures?

For a fellow Forum guy, I can do that!

Another beauty!

Well, not particularly for this one, but I've always wanted to see the full lettering of a 1790s large cent!

hehe, too easy since I own one(unfortunately, I do not have a pic of mine handy so I had to shamelessly rip it)
It is a reference to a line from Martin van Buren's inaugural speech, the predecessor being Andrew Jackson who helped create the banking collapse in the 1830s- hence the name Hard Times Token.

Actually it's quite the opposite. This coin is worth more than you can possibly imagine. 1/000 dollars is approaching infinite!

If this were to be numerically accurate, you should be able to buy your own country and still have plenty left over.

I just hardlocked thinking about it - had to go pound my head against a doorway to reboot.

I was going to post the "Guru Meditation Error" for Divide by Zero, but then I wondered exactly how many people would even know what that meant without having to Google it!