RDB-500c-1847-01R Pre-Cud

Description

Documented by the Cuds on Coins attribution service, RDB-500c-1847-01R records a pre-cud die variety on the reverse of an 1847 Liberty Head Half Eagle, the five-dollar gold denomination that served as a workhorse of American commerce throughout the nineteenth century. The catalog designation follows the standardized naming convention: RDB for retained die break, 500c for the five-hundred-cent (five-dollar) denomination, 1847 for the date, 01 as the sequence number, and R indicating the reverse die location. Pre-cuds on gold coinage occupy a particularly notable position in die variety collecting because the inherent value of gold coins meant that damaged or unusual specimens were less likely to be discarded or melted than their copper or silver counterparts, yet the relatively modest mintages and high face values also limited the total population from which surviving varieties could emerge. Christian Gobrecht designed the Liberty Head Half Eagle obverse featuring Liberty wearing a coronet inscribed LIBERTY, while the reverse displayed a heraldic eagle with shield, olive branch, and arrows. Philadelphia struck approximately 915,981 half eagles in 1847, a figure that supported both domestic commerce and international trade during the era preceding the California Gold Rush. The reverse location of this pre-cud places the nascent die fracture among the eagle, shield, or peripheral elements, where a crack has begun propagating inward from the rim without yet producing the full separation and metal displacement characteristic of a retained cud. On struck coins, the pre-cud appears as a raised hairline tracing the crack path from the rim into the adjacent design. Gold's relative softness compared to copper-nickel alloys actually imposed less die stress per strike, making die cracks on gold denomination dies relatively less common and correspondingly more noteworthy when documented.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Heritage Auction
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References