QUARTERLY REVIEW: More Colonials, Hawaiian Coinage and Large Cents Overhaul

In this Quarterly I edition, we have reviewed every series to update prices based on reader feedback, live auction data, CDN Exchange marketplace bids and other anecdotal market observations. Patrick has added eight (8) more Colonial issues to our ever-expanding listing bringing the total issues priced to 46. We plan to continue these as time permits until the entire series is represented as best possible.

HAWAIIAN COINS PRICED
For the first time ever in the pages of CDN, we have priced the Hawaiian territorial issues in business strike and proof formats. This was a passion project of ours which coincided nicely with subscriber demand. Again, Patrick has spearheaded this project and your feedback is welcome. We are sorely tempted to work on Philippine issues but the scope of that project is much larger and space is an issue.

EXHAUSTIVE REVIEW OF LARGE CENTS
For this issue, large cents were in dire need of an exhaustive analysis. Since taking over CDN over a year ago, we have performed such reviews on every series we publish, a monumental task now complete with the Large cents. You can imagine the massive sigh of relief at our offices, but I assure you that the exultation was short lived – there is still much more work to be done, and we will never stop updating pricing to make sure every edition reflects the current marketplace.

1794 STARRED REVERSE CENT LIVES UP TO ITS NAME
The U.S. Mint issued large cents from 1793 to 1857 – a span of 58 years. Large cents are among the most passionately collected series in the entire American catalog and, while all coins were struck in Philadelphia, the number of varieties expands the series extensively and specialists of all sub-types abound. One of these was Jon Alan Boka, who focused on 1794-dated cents alone. His amazing specialty collection was sold at the recent September Long Beach show by Heritage Auctions to surprisingly strong results highlighted by his example of the famous 1794 Starred-reverse cent. The coin, with tiny stars on the reverse between denticles, captivates collectors of all U.S. Coins for its strange and unique feature. The Boka coin is graded PCGS VF35 and listed as fifth finest known, but has the distinction of being the original example to discover the variety by Henry Chapman himself in 1877! It’s safe to say that this coin was the star of the collection and brought in an impressive $258,500 at the auction.

BY JOHN FEIGENBAUM, PUBLISHER
& PATRICK IAN PEREZ, EDITOR