Hello everyone I got a problem. I have three 1859 Canadian One Cents. First one I have is Very Good Quality also has cracks in the metal. Has a flat metal clank when dropped. Second one has a hole in it and Lower Quality. Has a high metal ping when dropped. Third one has Medium Quality with Dints. Has a high metal ping when dropped. All are Narrow 9's. Can I under stand one should be brass and one should be bronze by this information. Also I have very high quality scans I made of these coins. About 25mb each. Coins or presented Top #1 to Bottom #3. http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/file/882.421617.10082010.29663.6a64fi/Brass0001.jpg http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/file/960.442813.11082010.59705.6a64fi/Brass0002.jpg Thanks
Your second pic doesn't load. There's a few Canadian large cent collectors here. I'm sure you'll get the info you need. Welcome to Coin Talk!
Okay, I made up my mind that the 2nd one, in the pictures above, with the hole in it would not be worth as much. So I cleaned it. Here are the pictures of it after the cleaning. These are much smaller quality pics. about 45kb each. http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/file/085.051518.12082010.98626.6a64fi/Brass0003.jpg http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/file/898.081518.12082010.98629.6a64fi/Brass0004.jpg
Also adding smaller version of the first post since it might have been over kill on size. http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/file/929.012718.12082010.99705.6a64fi/Brass0001Sm.jpg http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/file/929.042718.12082010.99710.6a64fi/Brass0002Sm.jpg
I'm going to leave the identification to someone like snaz or Bill in Burl. They know a lot more about large cents than I do. My main focus is small cents. Word of advice..... Never clean a coin! If this is the rare brass cent, by cleaning it you may have reduced the value by up to 75%. It's best to leave coins as they are. Remember that on this coin, it has taken 150 years for the patina to form on it which is highly desirable by collectors. By cleaning it, it is considered damaged and may not even get a grade. I had a coin collection when I was young that had a catalog value of about $1000 and after cleaning the coins with Silvo and Brasso, I got just about face value (about $50.). It still hurts.
Here's a response to your query by Bill in Burl: http://www.cointalk.com/t124021/ Re: Possible 1859 brass Canada Cent I am answering your question in the only way I think possible with my computer. I have tried again and again to answer threads already started and they just keep going further and further to the right and off the page. I can also never find the "post" button. Is is way way way out to the lower right somewhere, but I can't find it. Here is my response to your brass 1859 question: First, you can't tell a brass cent by dropping it on a hard surface. You must take the coins into sunlight/daylight .. no artificial light. Gently scratch the edge of the coin with a diamond(best) or glass shard. If it's brass, the bare metal will be yellowish .. but even the bronze is a little yellowish if you try to wish too hard. The specific wieghts and actual percentages of the alloy mix for the planchets was not always the same. The samll percentages of tin or zinc in the copper alloy makes the determination of what constitues "brass" as defined by Haxby, Charlton, or others very difficult. It is my belief and that of other major variety collectors that the "brass" cent was made by accident and not a planned Mint product. I think of it more as an "error" than anything. I am 99.99% sure that you don't have a brass one.
Hello, Lance DC! I actually managed to download your original Brass001 photo on my Droid phone (after about 5 minutes!). To me, the "chocolate brown" color (in the photo, anyway) of the holed cent suggests it is regular bronze. I have a brass large cent that I bought as a curiosity decades ago, and it's definitely "olive" toned with yellow showing on the more worn spots. I'm about to leave on a road trip (to Canada, in fact), but I'll try to take and post some photos of it next to a regular bronze cent. BTW, does your screen name refer to your location (DC)? I live in that area, too. Hot enough fer ye? (note: I'm hard-returning the lines of this msg so they don't turn into a single line of text that's 10 feet (3.1 meters) long!
Photos of 1859 brass large cent next to bronze cent Here are some quick snaps of my 1859 brass cent (left) beside a regular one. Note the yellowish highlights--the olive toning doesn't show up well, probably due to the bad lighting.
That is one WICKED coin. Now I agree that it's not a brass cent. Very positive it's not. But it has a wicked planchet crack at 11 ish on the obverse and the same location when you flip it. Very cool. That's wicked
For jlesliec ... As a Victoria large cent collector for 40 years, it looks to me like both your coins have been cleaned giving them the peculiar colors that you have. I've seen many many "yellow" 1859's and not a single one is a brass one. Is yours certified? I'd have to see a better scan, but I don't think that it is.
Thanks for the comments. These photos are terrible, though--as posted they're very poor, especially the color. I'll try to take some better ones. The coin is not certified--the brass cent wasn't even listed in Charlton's when I bought it. The dealer simply sold it as curio. And I know it hasn't been cleaned for at least 30 years.
You can see a picture of the brass coin here : http://www.coinsandcanada.com/coins-prices.php?coin=1-cent-1859&years=1-cent-1858-1859 This is the coin sold at Heritage Auction.
Better pix of 1859 cent Just for fun, here are some higher-rez, truer-color pics of the possibly brass cent, in fluorescent light on a light tan background. It definitely looks yellowish, whatever it's made of. I'm asking some professional opinions, but since I paid so little for the coin, I don't mind if I have to kiss my brass goodbye. It's a nice narrow-9 in any event.
It looks to me like any other '59 that has come into chemical contact with any number of possible cleaning agents. As I have put in other posts, the only way to tell for sure (and what the "experts" will do) is to take it out side or at a window into natural light .... no artificial light. Gently scratch the edge with a diamond or piece of glass (no metal). Then look at the color of the base metal that lies under the surface tone. Even bronze in bare metal looks a little yellow. There are no specific Obv or Reverse markers that will tell you a brass one because the current examples don't show similarities. It is my opinion and that of other Vicky experts that there really were no real "brass cents" made on purpose..... they were the result of alloy mixing errors in the making of the planchets. The specific gravities and the small percentages of zinc and tin are so close, it takes very little to cross the threshhold from bronze to brass. Too long in the mixing pot, impurities in the core metal, or the first pour from the mixing pot all could result in "brass" resulting rather than bronze. This was the late 1850's and the Royal Mint had worked only with copper before. The planchets for the 1/3 thinner (but same dia as the Brit halfpenny) Canada large cents were special order because all previous Brit coinage was just copper..... and it was a massive 10 million piece order. I've looked at 10's of thousands of Vicky large cents and I don't think that yours is brass.
Bill: Thanx again for taking a look. I'll do the scratch test... as soon as I can find a diamond. ;^}
