1787 Connecticut Copper. Miller 33.41-Z.11, W-3975. Rarity-7-. Draped Bust Left. Fine Details--Corrosion Removed (PCGS).
123.0 grains. Thoroughly granular deep steel brown through the recesses while the devices are largely a bit lighter mahogany brown allowing for a pleasing, if mild, contrast. The PCGS qualifier sounds more aggressive than what is visible here. There is no tooling, but just fairly even, moderate porosity over both sides. The eye appeal is actually quite nice for the grade, and Randy Clark notes that these might have been struck from rusted dies to begin with, and that they are "commonly found on porous planchets." Rather well centered, with full legends, date, and most of the border, too. A rare variety and the obverse die suggests why. All seen have a large bisecting crack, a rather prominent failure that somewhat surprisingly did not render the die useless from the outset. This is, however, the only seen pairing for this obverse, so it probably did not strike many coins. When we sold the Frederick Taylor coins in 1987, two examples were included and only one other was known to us for sure, though the Miller plate coin was mentioned as a possible fourth. This is Miller's own coin, featured on the plate in his State Coinage of Connecticut. It was suggested as possibly the finest known in Ford, but the Somerset Sale coin (Bowers and Merena, May 1992:185) had apparently not been remembered. That is clearly the best one, graded VF-35 by NGC, but this remains Condition Census for the variety, almost by default, as there are not many more than six known! The obverse is plated in Clark. With Hillyer Ryder's original paper tag giving the Elder sale provenance in neat blue pen on one side, and the attribution in brown on the other.
PCGS# 687357. NGC ID: 2B2X.
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From the Sydney F. Martin Collection. Earlier from Thomas Elder's sale of the Henry C. Miller Collection, May 1920, lot 1999 (part); Hillyer C. Ryder; F.C.C. Boyd; our (Stack's) sale of the John J. Ford, Jr. Collection, Part IX, May 2005, lot 427; Jim LaSarre, via John Agre and Dave Wnuck (Coin Rarities Online), June 2006.
Price realized | 1'800 USD |
Starting price | 1 USD |
Estimate | 4'750 USD |