1859 Large Cent - Wide And Narrow 9 Varieties

THe wide nine is a 9 over 8 I believe. As for the second one, could you zoom in on the date. Certain doublings on the 9 are considered a known variety and have some value. As for your 9 over 8, it carries a very small premium. You m ight get 10-20$ on ebay

Early on before there were semi-proper names for varieties (at least 40 years ago), your first coin was called a "wide 9". It is now called a 9/8(and has been for decades) ... a different font 9 was punched into 13-14 left-over 1858 working dies for 1859-dated coins. They used a larger font 9 because it supposedly completly obliterated the underlying 8, but none were done to perfection. You could always see the underpunch 8 in the gap between the tail and the upper loop ... and usually on/in the upper loop as well. The new 1859 Reverse working dies had a narrow 9 that was in the same font as the other digits.

So I'm guessing my overdate is the more interesting of the two coins?

The overdate will get you a bit more money if you sell it. But like Phil said, the narrow 9 is interesting because there were so many die pairs and figuring out which ones belong to this coin is a fun challenge.

The 1858 and 1859 cents were almost 1/3 thinner than the British half-penny, which has the same diameter. The Brit Royal Mint used the presses and machine implements for the half penny to mint the Canadian (then a Province) cents. People didn't like them (they thought that they were fake or worth less) so, in the next mintage year of 1876, they made them the same size, weight and diameter as the Brit half pennies and everyone was happy. The Canadian populace was used to using foreign coinage and Colonial & bank tokens much larger/heavier than the new Provincial cents.

Because the '58 & '59 planchets were so much thinner and the Canadian bronze coins were harder than copper planchets, they chewed up the dies during the minting process as well. The Reverse intricate design with the leaves/vines also affected the die life. That's the reason that there are so many 1859 varieties .. some Obverse dies were married to 4-5 or more Reverse dies, because the reverse dies broke so often.

If you found an 1859 metal detecting, there is no way that you can measure anything to determine if it's brass. Any circulated coin weighs less than it did when minted due to wear. The Provincial cents were, as I said, 1/3 thinner than any made after... so that 100 of them would weigh a pound and each of them was 1 inch in diameter. Merchants could use them as a measuring tool. Don't bother weighing your find .. I'm 99.9% sure that it's bronze.