Lightly cleaned with hairlines in the obverse field. Minor tooling is visible in the right obverse field, apparently to diminish the appearance of minor scratches. Pale gray obverse with some light tan on the devices. The reverse is very deep steel and grayish brown. The obverse has a prominent bulge in the left field, similar to the Overton plate coin. This may have caused some weakness of strike. The reverse appears much sharper.

This is an extremely rare variety, one of just a small number known. Just eight auction appearances have been recorded by Steve Herrman. This variety was unknown to Al Overton when he published the second edition in 1970 and was discovered that same year by Donald Gunnet. Today, approximately 20 examples are known. With very few exceptions, actual determination of the number known for a given variety is very difficult as more examples are constantly being found. Since its discovery in 1970, collectors started searching for more examples of this variety. Two decades later, Sheridan Downey published an article in Volume 5, Issue 3 of the Journal and provided a census of the number known for the higher rarity half dollars. At that time, in 1990, he considered this the 10th most difficult half dollar die marriage with just 14 examples known. Today, about 20 are known. Ten years from now, we cannot predict how many new examples will have been discovered, but the rate of discovery seems to be five to seven coins every decade. Perhaps there will be 25 examples known by 2012. Of course, one might surmise that in the next 10 years, more than five or six new collectors will be competing for the available population.

Purchased February 1, 1991 from Sheridan Downey.