1/2 Penny - Nova Constellatio "Blunt Rays, CONSTELATIO"

The Nova Constellatio coppers of 1783 were produced by a Birmingham manufacturer — almost certainly Matthew Boulton's operation or a close competitor — under contract tied to proposals by Gouverneur Morris and Robert Morris for a new American decimal coinage system. Congress never formally authorized them, and the pieces circulated in something of a legal grey zone, filling a desperate shortage of small change in the post-Revolutionary economy.

This specific die marriage, distinguished by blunt rays and the misspelling CONSTELATIO, points to a second or variant working die produced during the same general run. The missing second L is consistent across multiple known examples, suggesting it was cut in error and never corrected rather than being a late-state deterioration.