CU-1C-1852-03 Rim Cud

Description

Third documented rim cud on the 1852 Braided Hair Coronet Head Cent, CU-1C-1852-03 completes a trio of rim breaks cataloged for this Gold Rush-era date. With three cuds recorded — CU-1C-1852-01, -02, and -03 — the 1852 cent provides a meaningful small sample for examining die rim failure patterns during the final decade of large cent production. Philadelphia's 1852 output of 5,063,094 cents required die pairs that endured thousands of impressions each, and the copper planchets weighing approximately 10.89 grams demanded substantial striking force to achieve full design definition. Christian Gobrecht's Braided Hair design, by 1852 in its fourteenth year of production, had reached a state of manufacturing maturity where die preparation methods were standardized — yet standardization did not eliminate rim fractures, which are fundamentally governed by die steel quality, collar fit, and cumulative mechanical fatigue. The absence of supplementary die markers or comments beyond the CU-1C-1852-03 cross-reference suggests the rim cud is the sole collectible feature. Cataloged by Cuds on Coins, this third 1852 cud expands the documented record of large cent die failures during a period when the denomination's future was uncertain — within five years, the Coinage Act of 1857 would discontinue the large cent entirely, replacing it with the smaller, lighter Flying Eagle Cent that imposed far less mechanical stress on dies and would generate its own distinct catalog of die varieties on the new reduced format.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Friscomint1793 on eBay
• CU-1C-1852-03
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References