1798 Draped Bust Large Cent S-187 Obverse Cud

Description

Sheldon variety S-187 of the 1798 Draped Bust Large Cent in the Second Hair Style displays a dramatic obverse cud where a piece of the die broke away from the rim directly in front of Liberty's face, leaving a raised featureless area on the struck coin. This cud formed inside two intersecting rim-to-rim die cracks, which created a triangulated stress zone that eventually caused the enclosed die section to fracture and separate completely. Once the fragment fell away, the resulting cavity filled with metal during each strike, producing the characteristic featureless raised mass. The 1798 Draped Bust Cent belongs to the early republic era of American coinage, when the Philadelphia Mint was refining its production techniques and dies were entirely hand-engraved from individual punches. The Sheldon numbering system, developed by Dr. William Sheldon in his 1949 reference work "Early American Cents," assigns a unique number to each known die pairing of large cents from 1793 through 1814. The S-187 die pairing in the Second Hair Style places this coin within the later obverse style of the 1798 issue, where Liberty's hair was redrawn from the initial 1796 design. Cuds on early American copper are significant because they document die failure during a period when die production was expensive and laborious, and each failed die represented a substantial loss of time and resources for the young Mint.

Attribution History

• Discovered by NumisDexDealer
• Sheldon S-187