1889 1c MS RD

1889 Cent Production: Mintages start to climb during this era. Planchets this year were purchased from Merchant & Company of Philadelphia. Merchant won the contract with a bid of 26¢ per pound. A slight difference is noticeable in the color of full red examples, which tend to be a bit paler than those of other years.

Survivability: As with the other dates of this era, these were workhorse coins that stayed in circulation long after the design was changed in 1909. High-grade examples survived only by chance.

Collecting Challenges: Select eye-appealing examples without problems, compared to ordinary coins. These mostly come well struck, but with odd or uneven toning.

Collecting Circulated Pieces: The optimal collecting grade for circulated coins is AU-50. Select problem-free examples with exceptional eye appeal. Many collections of circulated Indian Head cents start o" from an accumulation, possibly plucked from circulation generations ago. Collections like these tend to start as a hole-filling exercise, which is fun as the set becomes complete. However, a much more rewarding collecting experience comes when a collection is upgraded from average circulated coins to choice circulated examples in the Extremely Fine to About Uncirculated grade range. The object is to search out the ideal coin for each date, taking into account color, strike, and overall quality in addition to the technical grade. In most cases, money spent on carefully selected coins will not be money lost.

Collecting Mint State Pieces: The optimal collecting grade for Mint State coins is MS-65RB or MS-64RD. Full reds are scarce, so a 64RD will likely cost more than a 65RB. Gem MS-65RD examples are quite rare. Most have a pale color. Woodgrain toning is prevalent for this issue—a type of toning caused by improperly mixed alloy. (When the planchet strip is rolled out to the correct thickness the pockets of tin and zinc alloy become stretched into streaks.) It will be harder for coins struck from these types of planchets to retain their full red color, so these are usually given a red-brown color designation.

Collecting Proof Issues: These are of average quality, with full red examples very diffcult to find. Full red coins are sometimes found with a pale gold color. Full cameo examples are very rare. Curiously, one of the two known die pairs has clashed dies. Clashed dies are caused when the obverse and reverse dies make contact and impart the outline of their designs on each other. Although clashed dies do not alter the desirability of the resulting coins, it is unusual to find them on Proof coins. Many 1889 Proof cents are singly struck. Perhaps quality control was lacking at the Mint this year.

Presently 33 different die varieties of interest are known. The best is Snow-1, which has a bold doubled die visible on the right wreath and shield on the reverse. Snow-31 has multiple o"-center die clash marks. These show up as a series of dashes (transferred from the denticles of another die) through the O in ONE and C in CENT. Another series of dashes is visible to the left of the E in ONE. The remaining varieties are mostly repunched dates.