1859, Another One With Open Questions.

The other markers are not there for a 9/6 or DP#5. Too bad it is so worn or we might be able to tell more.

47: You have a real puzzler here and I may or may not have seen one like it. It would be nice to se the coin in-hand to work around the anomalies that are there. I, personally, do not use the Haxby die-tracking system since I use a short description of what I see rather than assign numbers to '59 varieties that I research. I think that you are using the term "expert" a little loosely when you describe my fixation on Victoria Cent varieties, but I have spent over 30 years working with them, starting with Zoell's pamphlets from the 60's through Griffin's work in the 80's & 90's and then to my own tweeking of what I found. The following are some binoc shots at 60X of both the DP#5 (R2b) and the 9/6 (or 9 over inverted 9) which which your coin some attributes of both. All of these shots are old and may be mine or someone else's image, but it gets the general idea down. I do not know how attachments are displayed on this site, whether the first one I attach ends up first or last on the post, but you should be able to figure it out with the legend.

I will say a couple things first: I have not seen (or recorded) a DP#5 Reverse married to any other Obverse other than the mangled D/C's at the R in Regina (among other markers for that Obverse). Likewise, I have never seen a 9/6 type(there are at least 2 Reverses) overpunch that did not have the finite vine break at leaf 2. Since all 1859's had the final digit handpunched in and it took 2-4 smacks with the hammer to make a deep enough impression into the working die, you may have a combination of the 2 overpunches on a different Reverse. To start with, all of the raw '59 working dies had just the "185" impressed into the die from the hub. After each blow with the hammer to add the 9 to the date, the punch was hardened and the die annealed(softened) so the floor worker didn't smack it 1, 2, 3 like pounding in a nail. There could have been hours, days or weeks between the indivdual blows. Since the 9 and 6 digit punches were the same (just turned 180 degrees upside down), a liquid lunch or distraction or newbie wielding the hammer may have produced the single blow that resulted in one of the 2, 3, 4 punches needed to complete the impression showing to be upside down. I will add that, on many of the working dies that did not have the 9's directly on top of each other (the digits are actually very small in reality), they polished off the mistakes that showed outside of the outline of the digit. I'll say MOST, not all of them, tried to correct the outside-showing misalignment by polishing. Those underpunches showing inside the digit were usually left alone.

As can be seen in the following attachment, the DP#5 (R2b)is just a hi/lo overpunch with the inside arc of the upper loop showing inside the digit, with what-have-been the underpunch tail polished off the die. Normally all you will see is the underpunch arc in the upper part of the loop of the 9 but, on higher grade examples of early pre-worn dies, you can see some of the underpunch below the final 9 where polishing didn't remove it all flush.




Now, the 9/6 is a different animal. This is an overlay shot to show what you would see on the coin, with the underpunch 6 showing within the confines of the final 9. I think that the arc that shows is the outside(upper edge) of what would be the lower loop of the 6 as well as what fills the gap between the tail and the loop of the final 9.



Next is a sideways shot of what an actual coin looks like (I couldn't get it rightside up and have the glare or resolution correct).





Your coin seems to be a combination of the two on an entirely different reverse die and caused by a wild-swinger with the hammer.Your "E" marker I think is definitely a hi/lo underpunch just like a DP#5. The flag or pennant-like impression (your B) at the top left is another underpunch that is not only the upper part of the 6, but also lo/hi overpunch of the 9. The space between the B and the E is too wide to have come from the same hand-punch strike, so it had to be 2 separate whacks. The stuff that shows outside the outline of the final 9 is just misalignment between the consecutive blows. The guy must have had a 3-beer lunch.

I may have seen a coin like this personally sometime in the past, but may have passed it by or didn't save it because it didn't have all the proper markers to fit into one of my classification niches. I'm pretty sure that someone in the past showed essentially the same coin on one of the other coin sites some time (years) ago (CCRS?).

I hope that all these words have helped clear up a few of the mysteries, but I may just have fogged it up more. I'd love to see a more crisp example to see for sure what it is.

47P7 here is a pic of mine! If you compare your coin to mine I believe that they will be the same

Hope this helps!
MG

Yes and this is the 9 over inverted 9 #2 and you can still see the circle inside the 9

MG

My opinion is that, if you can't see it with your naked eye or less than 5X magnification, it is not a worthy variety. To really see specific markers on some varieties, I use a 16 or 20X loupe, preferably unlighted to eliminate glare. For binocs, I use 20X or 60X for close photos.

With enough magnification, every single letter or digit on a Victoria Cent would look like it was repunched. I also do not consider die cracks, filled dies, or broken vines or stems to be any type of variety because they were made with faulty machinery or tools. Likewise, Cuds, strike-throughs, planchet cracks, etc are errors and not varieties. Again, that is what I consider all these different types of anomalies. To a purist, every single working die or different die marriage is a variety, as well as anything that happens during its life.

The initial Vicky of this thread is a relatively common lower grade
ensample of Dr. Haxby's Obverse 64A1 / Reverse J22. The mark atop
the nine is a characteristic die-clash of the throat and chin area.

doug

Throat and chin clash marks are commonly found about the 9.
Some varieties are found having five and six superimposed
clashes.

doug