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1796 NC-7 R8- Draped Bust with Stemless Wreath PCGS

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / US Coins Start Price:10,000.00 USD Estimated At:20,000.00 USD
1796 NC-7 R8- Draped Bust with Stemless Wreath PCGS
1796 NC-7 R8- Draped Bust with Stemless Wreath. PCGS graded Fair-2. Nice glossy chocolate brown. The surfaces are smooth and very nice for the grade, just heavily worn. The only notable mark is a dull nick touching the base of O in ONE. The date is full and reasonably strong considering the amount of wear, just the base of the 1 fading into the rim below. LIBERTY is mostly worn away, but RTY can be made out with some difficulty. About a third of the reverse remains legible, including ONE CENT, OF, and most of the wreath. The stemless feature is clear on the right side of the fraction, but is worn smooth on the left side. An attractive example for the grade, and the important attribution features are clear. Third finest of only 3 known. This variety features a previously unused obverse die (Breen #26) mated with the stemless reverse of 1797 S-143 & NC-8. The finest is a heavily tooled example in the ANS collection. There is a fourth impression from this pair of dies, but it hardly counts as an example of the NC-7 die variety. It is actually a half cent struck over a cut-down example of this large cent variety, and the stemless wreath feature is not present as that part of the design is off the smaller planchet. The significance of the half cent is that it validated the tooled Clapp coin in the ANS as the only known example (at that time) of a distinct variety. Dr. Sheldon listed the ANS coin in his Early American Cents published in 1949 as "NC-6". When he published Penny Whimsy in 1958 Dr. Sheldon was sufficiently skeptical of the tooled coin that he "delisted" the variety, believing it was created by tooling some other known die variety. Graded G5 net AG3 and tied for CC#2 among the 3 known examples in the Noyes census, his photo #38900. Called AG3 and tied for CC#2 in the Bland census. The amount of wear, especially on the reverse, probably doesn't justify the AG3 grade assigned by these census graders, but the superior color and surfaces make the slightly higher grade easy to accept. However, our grade is Fair-2+. PCGS Population 1; The only example graded at PCGS for the variety. DWH #1876.
Estimated Value $20,000-UP.
Discovered by Rod Burress in April or May 1999 in a box of large cents offered by a non-EAC dealer at the Green Hills Coin Show (Ohio), then to Dan Holmes 11/18/99.

Our item number 142745