1834 Bust Half

I'm going to say F-15 for this coin.

Superdave, thanks for the help on attribution. Is there somewhere I can check out more of these online, or is your information book-based? What do O-112 and R.3 mean?

As far as being cleaned... it really does NOT look cleaned to me in hand, but the darkness around the devices has me suspicious. It almost looks like dark toning to me as well. It does not look so shiny in hand.

I am starting to lean towards not cleaned.

Al Overton is the originator of the variety system for Bust Halves. Bust Half die varieties are therefore described with Overton numbers - O-112 in your case, the 12th variety he listed for that year. R.3 is the rarity rating assigned this variety by Overton - advisory only as there ratings were assigned a long time ago and are subject to change as new coins come to light. The higher the number, the more scarce the coin. R.3 doesn't really carry a premium due to scarcity, but they're less common than R.1's and R.2's.

The information is not all available online. I work from my copy of Early Half Dollar Varieties, the reference Overton wrote on the subject, and then back up my attributions by looking at similar coins from Heritage auction results.

Register for free at Heritage (ha.com) yet, to gain access to the most amazing database of high-resolution coin shots from completed auctions that you'll ever see. I make no guarantees about the safety of your wallet once you see what they have to offer, though.

It's not a perfect system, because not all coins are attributed, but they've got Bust Halves pretty well covered due to their popularity. Just search the Bust Halves category, for instance,




...and check "Search Title and Description," and you'll get, in this case, 42 results. It's interesting to note that Heritage has record of only 4 Mint State examples of this variety, going back to 1993, and none since 2000. I suspect in Mint State the O-112 is a major condition rarity.