1803 Half Cent C-3 Die State And Grading

Later die states / die wear, die rust, chips, cracks, etc. do not affect the grade of a coin, although some collectors prefer coins without die artifacts.

They can make it more difficult to determine a grade, though, because the worn dies can be confused with actual circulation wear or damage.

Manley's " Half Cent Die States 1793-1857" is still the gold standard for Half Cent die stage analysis.

My name is also Adam and I collect a lot of early copper so I had to jump in on this one.

Unfortunately, most of the references used by early copper enthusiasts are in print only.

This is because their authors are not being paid for their time -- years and years of research and education go into those books, and publishing those big, hardbound volumes is not cheap -- so they have a right to earn income for the valuable service they provide to collectors. It would really de-motivate those same authors if anyone, anywhere could simply Google the contents of their books and read them for free. That's why I try to buy all of my books directly from the authors or their publishers themselves if possible, so that my money is directly going to support them, not Amazon or ebay or abebooks or any other site.

Of course, if you just want to dip your toes in the pool, it's far easier to simply Google a given coin and look for images from Heritage and other auction houses, PCGS/NGC/ANACS, or coin dealers that have already attributed the coin. This way you can make visual comparisons to your own coins and see if you can match them to known examples.

But if you plan on going in "whole hog" on a certain series (Half Cents, Large Cents, colonial issues..) then buying the book is both extremely useful and supports the people whose time makes the continued existence and updating of those books possible. And besides, if you do decide it's not for you, you can usually get most of your money back by selling the books to another collector, since prices tend to be relatively stable for the more popular reference books (Noyes, Grellman/Reiver, Newcomb, Manley, Cohen, Bowers, Miller, Maris, et al. just to name a few off the top of my head.)