I Have Two 1859 Pennies. Are These Any Rare Varieties?

The photos are a bit too grainy when enlarged to make any useful IDs. The 1859 cents make for wonderful hours chasing the Haxby die varieties.

On your first coin, I see a likely repunched "N" in CANADA and several key markers on the reverse: repaired loop on leaf 2, large break on the loop on leaf 7, no stem on leaf 8, likely Group J or Group P repair on leaf 9. There is also a large die break through leaf 10 and a likely repunched "1" in the date.

Your second coin has distinctive repunched "Gs" in GRATIA and in REGINA. Most likely, that would make that coin Obverse 7, 23, or 54.

That should get you started on your search.

Warning: Haxby hunting can be habit-forming.

Here is a link to the Haxby site if you don't already have it.

On October 15, there will be a new feature in the catalog showing the rarity rating of each die pair, so if you learn to ID the Haxby die pair, you will then know if it is common or rare.

If you have trouble identifying them, we will help. fortcollins has given you some idea of the kind of things to look for when attributing 1859 N9's.

https://www.vickycents.com/

The last 1 is possibly PC59-202
Look at leaf 9 stem and check for die cracks as they help re markers.
https://www.vickycents.com/rev-e22a.html

As best I can tell from your photos, your first coin looks to be Haxby obverse 54a and reverse J13b.

The second coin looks like Haxby obverse 20a and reverse E22a (fourmack already gave you a link to that reverse page). The broken left foot on the A of REGINA indicates it is obverse 20a instead of obverse 20.

You might want to check those pages out and compare the actual coins to see if they match.

If those do turn out to be the actual die pairs for your coins, they are both fairly common die pairs.

No worries. I only mention it because it's a misconception I have noticed in Canada. A lot of Canadian collectors tend to talk about die cracks, breaks, Cuds, and clashes as varieties or errors, for whatever reason, when they are only reflective of die states. Just trying to clear that up.

Also, every 1859 N9 die had the 9 punched into it by hand. The position of this digit, therefore, varies, sometimes quite noticeably. There again, we technically have a new variety with every position of the 9. While it is certainly true that date digit position differences and repunched letters/digits are trivial varieties, they are true varieties just the same. And things like die collapses, Cuds, die clashes and die cracks that do not create different varieties can nonetheless be most useful as die markers for those of us who care about such things.

joecoin .... I use my 40+ years of collecting '59 varieties and by exchanging research data with other collectors in our fairly small niche. I just use the common (or recognized) name and put it on the holder. It was our small group that got Charlton to recognize, and put in the front pages, the DP#3, #4, #5 and 9/6 after we wrote the Vicky variety section for the 65th Charlton. That edition is now extremely hard to find because everyone kept them and, when you do, you'll need a thick wallet. I don't think that there has ever been a recognized '59 variety that I don't (or used to)have. Almost the same for the rest of the Vicky varieties..... I have thousands.

Haxby's is a great site, but I'm not a die tracker and I prefer to use common, logical names for a variety, rather than groups or numbers.