USA: ½ dollar 1861O, kmA68, die crack on obverse

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces14904.html



comments?

Good. Year line and coin page changes:

Looks fine to me, but tell me, why don't we have designer AND engraver for all the km#?

Why should we add a simple die crack as a yearline?

A lot of American collectors, and quite a few members of Numista are from the US, collect the coins according to the Red Book, USACoinBook, PCGS etc, and there it's mentioned as a variant, hence we have made a year line for it! It's nearly the same as some of the overdates, which I can NOT distinguish, nevertheless the US collectors appreciate them.

That doesn't mean, that die cracks from every country from now on should have die cracks registered, um Gottes Willen.

Have you noticed how each country in Numista set up their own year lines. Look at Australia, where the color of a set of coins now get their own yearlines? https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces2288.html. It's just as bad as die cracks in my opinion, aber was soll es.

We have to accept that all countries are not equal in collecting interests?

Take care
Ole

Of course do I know of the Australian package catalog but this will probably stay that way as long as the ref or we get the set feature at some point (but even with that rolls will have to go).

But I don't see the point especially if it isn't even implemented across the whole country I personally know of several different die brakes of a single 1 cent year. I also can't anticipate the thousands of different die lines for the large cent aficionados maybe even with die state sub year lines.

I agree it's great to document these minting defects in the comments, but it's completely inconsistent to add them as datelines.

Please read the comments on the coin page about the significance of this particular die crack. It is much more than a simple die crack. It has great relevance to the history of the US during the time of the Civil War and is an indicator of coins struck outside of federal government control but nevertheless recognized as legal tender by the same federal government. It is much more than a run of the mill mint error and deserves to be recognized as a variant in its own right due to its historic significance. Red Book, PCGS and SCWC recognize it as a separate year line variant.

I will have a discussion with the US referee when I submit this change and let him decide if a separate year line is warranted.

Edit: A better way to look at this is that this coin deserves its own year line because it was minted by the CSA, not the USA. The die crack is just the way of being positive these are CSA minted coins. I'll change the year line comment request to, "Minted by the government of the CSA, distinguished from other 1861 O coins by the obverse die crack."

I prefer to have it with an explanation of CSA:

I think we're all agreed now. Thanks for the comments for this one.

Citeer: "Sjoelund"​Looks fine to me, but tell me, why don't we have designer AND engraver for all the km#?

​​Basically because finding out who they are has proven to be very difficult especially for these early US coins. Red Book, SCWC, PCGS, USACoinbook many times contradict each other. Getting one name is easy, getting both near impossible.

OK

Was CSA as an issuing authority considered?

Citeer: "tdziemia"​Was CSA as an issuing authority considered?

​Interesting question. First of all, CSA doesn't exist as an issuing authority in the catalog. Even the CSA pattern coins such as this has the United States as the issuing authority. But besides that, these coins were in fact "issued" by the USA and deemed legal coinage by the USA. By chance some of the coins produced by the New Orleans Mint could be identified by the die crack but the majority of the 2,532,633 coins made there were at the time indistinguishable from the 330,000 made while Louisiana was still in the Union. The best we could do I think is explain all this in the comments.

Another issue if somebody wanted to give this coin its own page with its own issuing authority is that it has the same KM number. SCWC lists it under USA issue and not CSA issue.

My mistake ... Under United States > United States, we have a currency for CSA, but this doesn;t really fit there.

It's a sort of misfit .... The Issuing Authority is not United States, but CSA since it was struck after Louisiana seceded.
But the currency is the U.S. Dollar, not CSA Dollar.