1776 (i.e. 1783) Continental Currency “Dollar.” Newman 1-B. CURENCY. Partially Dotted Rings. Rarity-7. Pewter. EF-40 (PCGS).
One of the outstanding rarities among the pewter Continental dollars, a variety unknown to Eric Newman at the time of his 1952 monograph. Attractive antique pewter gray with highlights of lighter silver gray where luster was last to fade. A well preserved example, showing only trivial surface marks despite the grade. Some minor chips are seen around the obverse periphery, the largest of which is over NE of CONTINENTAL, and a single rim nick is noted at 3 o'clock. On the reverse, an area of shallow corrosion mostly blends in below the inner circle at the intersection of the Delaware and Maryland rings. The die rotation is just right of medal turn. The B reverse, with its partially dotted rings, is essentially a die state of the Newman C reverse before it underwent major reworking to make the rings solid instead of dotted. Because of this, ring and letter positions are the same, but Newman 1-B shares certain hallmarks beyond the presence of partially dotted rings. All Newman 1-B specimens were struck before Obverse 1 develops a die break over GI in FUGIO. The punctuation after AMERICAN (in AMERICAN CONGRESS, on the reverse) appears as a comma instead of a period. The same lapping process that reduced the comma also later reduced the length of the rays right of CONGRESS. Perhaps most notably, a die chip (likely from spalling) appears within the center of the Pennsylvania ring at the lower right reverse on all Newman 1-B coins, but the reworking to Reverse C removed it entirely. When Breen wrote about this variety for his 1988 Encyclopedia, only two were known: the Picker coin (described as unique in 1984) and another more recent discovery. We sold the third known example (PCGS Fine-12) in our (Stack's) September 2006 sale, and two others in the last 15 years, neither of which were straight graded. There appears to be a total of fewer than 10 known in pewter. About the same number are known in brass.
PCGS# 915139.
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From the Sydney F. Martin Collection. Earlier ex John Kraljevich, August 2006.

Estimate: $30000