CU-1C-1803-05 Cud

Description

Fifth cataloged cud on the 1803 Draped Bust Large Cent with Small Date and Large Fraction, CU-1C-1803-05 documents a die break on one of the earliest denominations struck by the young United States Mint. Large cents of 1803 were produced on hand-operated screw presses at Philadelphia, where each planchet was individually positioned and struck by workers turning a weighted flywheel arm — a laborious process that subjected dies to inconsistent pressures. The copper planchets were often impure, cut from rolled strip metal of variable thickness, and the combination of soft die steel, imprecise tempering, and manual operation made die failures routine. Multiple die marriages exist for the 1803 Large Cent, cataloged by Sheldon numbers identifying specific obverse-reverse pairings, and cuds on these early coppers reveal the physical limits of early nineteenth-century die-making technology. The Small Date, Large Fraction variety places this cud on a specific die combination within the broader 1803 production, and the survival of cataloged die break varieties from this era reflects over two centuries of scholarship applied to early American copper coinage.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Friscomint1793 on eBay
• CU-1C-1803-05
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References