CU-1C-1852-01 Rim Cud

Description

First documented rim cud on the 1852 Braided Hair Coronet Head Cent, CU-1C-1852-01 holds the foundational position in the cud census for this Gold Rush-era large cent date. As the "01" entry, this variety represents the initial die rim failure documented for 1852, establishing the baseline against which subsequent discoveries — including CU-1C-1852-02 and CU-1C-1852-03 — are sequenced. Philadelphia struck 5,063,094 large cents in 1852, production that coincided with the peak of California Gold Rush activity and the growing debate over reducing the cent's size and weight that would eventually lead to the introduction of the small cent in 1857. The Braided Hair design by Christian Gobrecht had been in continuous use for thirteen years by 1852, and the dies were manufactured using techniques refined over decades of Philadelphia Mint operations — yet rim fractures remained an unavoidable consequence of striking large copper planchets under mechanical press force. Cataloged by Cuds on Coins under cross-reference CU-1C-1852-01, this variety documents die failure from one of the final years of the large cent denomination before Congress authorized the smaller Flying Eagle design in the Coinage Act of 1857. Collectors of Braided Hair large cent errors particularly value cud varieties because the large planchet size makes rim breaks visually prominent, and the historical context of pre-Civil War American copper coinage adds period significance to each documented die failure.

Attribution History

• Discovered by lgpcoions on eBay
• CU-1C-1852-01
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References