Help Please 1888 Large Cent

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Rick Stachowski
Posts: 92
Joined: Thu Jan 03, 2013 9:13 am

Help Please 1888 Large Cent

Post by Rick Stachowski » Wed Dec 04, 2013 9:29 am

I was wondering if this was a narrow date, or wide date, heres the link http://www.canadiancoin.com/varieties/l ... ieties.asp Image

Shylo
Posts: 213
Joined: Fri Apr 12, 2013 10:42 pm

Re: Help Please 1888 Large Cent

Post by Shylo » Sat Dec 07, 2013 9:44 pm

To me it looks like a narrow date..

Bill in Burl
Posts: 1469
Joined: Thu Sep 04, 2008 7:41 am
Location: Golden Horseshoe, ONT

Re: Help Please 1888 Large Cent

Post by Bill in Burl » Sun Dec 08, 2013 6:53 am

As I posted on the other sites, there is no such thing as a wide or narrow date 1888, just like there is no such thing as a 'low 9' 1859. For each of them you will have high, low, extremely far, extremely close and every other adjective that you can apply, including CW & CCW rotations, let alone all the repunches for that date. I don't know where this "narrow or wide" 8 is coming from ... maybe Zoell had it in one of his pamphlets but it's very misleading. There is every degree of spacing between the 8's, so which is the wide one or which is the high wide one? Take a look at Griffin's book and you will see that the spacing of the 8's is different on nearly each of the working dies. Just collect the '88's for the infinite varieties and repunches that are there and don't hogtie yourself be trying to squeeze all the spacings into narrow or wide.

I have well over 300 1888's and I'll bet that there aren't 25 of them with even close to the same spacing. I've got extremely close, very close, kinda close, kinda normal, somewhat wide, wide, far, far far, extremely far, etc ... let along try to add the vertical or rotational alignment of the last digit. BTW, I have nearly 10,000 Vickies ... about 1000 1859's alone, so I have a pretty good sample size to look at.
Bill in Burl

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