1838 Matron Head Large Cent

These are the pictures I had to judge the coin from ... so that's what you have to work with as well. If you can hold the control button on your keyboard and hit the hyphen , or in this case the minus button, each tap wil reduce the image size by 25 percent. I enlarged them from the listing.

There does appear to be a spot in the headband. I'm hoping that it's not hopelessly adhered. I have one more image of the reverse, and it looks as though it may have been lacquered.

Chance

We'll know more about that when it gets here, but the color could be due to lighting and if it is indeed lacquered, that will affect color as well.

This coin came from the seller's grandmother. It was placed in that evnelope in the 1930s. I asked if there were any others, and this was the oldest coin in the collection. Most of the rest of the stuff is wheats, minor errors, and much of it badly damaged by PVC from poor storage. ... bummer.

I got this coin, plus 15 Indian heads, for 52 dollars.

Chance

This was a buy it now. The seller assessed it as VF or better according to information gleaned from the David L Lawrence site coinstudy.com. It's not something that was sold in open bidding. There are numerous varieties of the 1838. If this was a high grade N-15 .... big score, but from what I can tell, I think it may be an N-11. I can't tell too awful mch from these pics though ... but I could see it was well worh the asking price, and then some with it's 15 Indian head partners.

Chance

Beautiful coin! Looks like a AU.

Fantastic pictures! I still think XF45, but beautiful nonetheless! :)

What you can't see in the pics that I can see with the coin in hand, is that the light (weak) devices and any flattened devices appear to be a function of strike weakness rather than of wear. The gloss of the original surface in these areas is not broken. For that reason, I contend that it's indeed AU, but not the best strike that you could encounter. The areas that have been abraded and the original skin broken appear a little darker than the rest of the coin.

Finding coins from old collections like this, still in their old envelopes, which pre-date the staple type 2 x 2s, is getting to be a pretty rare occurence. It's only the second time in 3 years where material I have bought is concerned. The Indian heads were in 2 x 2s, but the early style with rectangular windows rather than round ones sized to a specific diameter coin.

They're back "in the sauce" right now, but here is the lot of Indian heads that came with this coin. These were coated in slimy, green PVC contaminant.

Chance