1820 Half Eagle

HBCC#:

3139

Breen#:

6477

BD#:

5

Judd#:

n/a

Pollock#:

n/a

This is another example of Breen’s second group, with curled-base 2 and large letters. This appears to match Breen’s description for his obverse 3, with the first star not as close to the bust as either HBCC-3137 or 3138. Compare this reverse with either HBCC-3138 or 3140 to view the difference in letter size. This specimen is attributed as Breen-3-C. It is unusual to have a back and forth emission sequence with separate marriages involving two obverse dies and two reverse dies. Such an occurrence is explained by the term “re-marriage,” when a given die pair is discontinued and then later reunited.

Provenance:

From RARCOA's session of Auction '85, July 1985, Lot 434.

Obverse:

Reverse:

Commentary:

"Obverse: Curve-based 2. Belted 8. Sides of interior of 0 parallelized. Bottom tight curl to left of being centered over space between 2 0. Star 7 points at a cap angle. Die center punch in front of ear. Clash above cap, between stars 8-10, behind hair, field at bust end then between tops of 182. Reverse: Large letters. 'Punched' T (letter T has a triangular punch in bottom of upright. Used in other years.). S over E and space right. T over R and space right. S over US. Base of E high to that of adjacent T. Perfect M. Fairly close 5D, top of 5 markedly higher than that of D. Large period. Further lapped, more than half of shield's interior polished."