Picked Up This 1805 Large Cent At A Flea Market

First off -

Large cents in particular are probably the most studied US coin series - period. The main club for this is the EAC or Early American Copper, they publish an award winning scholarly journal which can be read for free (not withstanding the most recent years) at the Newman Numismatic Portal

EAC Club Website: http://eacs.org/

EAC Penny-Wise Journal: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/publi...etail/511683

A variety is simply a coin struck from a unique obverse/reverse die pairing. Serious large cent collectors collect their coins by die pairing, meaning each die used in manufacture of these coins could have very slight differences and multiple obverse and reverse dies could be used forming the various varieties. Many collectors over the years have written books and attempted to list these various varieties. Dr. William Sheldon was the one person to finally come up with the standard nomenclature through his book "Early American Cents" and the more famous later editions "Penny Whimsy" it is still considered to be one of the top variety coin books 70 years later.

Many of the Large cent varieties are down right fascinating in their own right, take for example my favorite the Sheldon 48 (S-48) The Stared Reverse - the reverse has tiny little stars stamped in between each denticle on the back.

https://www.PCGS.com/coinfacts/coin...rse-bn/35705 Click on the photo of the coins on that page to get a much larger image that will show the stars on the reverse quite easily.

These S-48's are extraordinarily rare and expensive however and out of the reach of most collectors, there are many low cost and just as interesting varieties available.

Tom Deck runs a wonderful website that shows off many varieties from his own collection and he also sells some coins. https://www.largecents.net/ Lots of good photos to show some of the various varieties in the large cent.

They say all serious collectors of United States coins eventually come to collect early large cents at the end and some move into Colonial and Half Cents as well, I find that is true, as I began collecting in the late 1970, I came to find the most exciting area in collecting US coinagae is the early history items Large cents, Half Cents, colonial, and some early tokens. So that is where I pretty much base my interests today.

Glad you made it over here I think you'll find this forum a bit more reasonable and knowledgeable that that last one I found you on. More level headed collectors and a lot of really smart folks hang out here.