Post a "details" coin that you would still own, even though it is damaged.

If I were still collecting - there would be many I would own. But, I would only own them IF, and that's a big IF, the price were right.

Based on my experience, most are not.

 

There's so many variables involved there is no way to answer that. Consider, prices alone for problem coins can range anywhere from 20-80% less than a problem free example. Then you have to factor in the type of problem and its severity. Then you have to factor in the desirability of the problem coin to the potential buyer - and that's all over the map.

Most problem coins I wouldn't take if you paid me $100 to take them.

But yet I have paid as much as $400 for a problem coin simply because I wanted that particular coin that badly. Of course problem free examples of that coin were over $1200 at the time. And 9 out of 10 people who saw the coin would not even know it was problem coin, but it was. I knew it, and NGC knew it.

 

I think more people have problems identifying harshly cleaned gold coins than they do any others. But I also think a large part of the reason for that is because most folks are not that familiar with gold coins. They just don't look at as many of them as they do silver & copper coins so it's harder for them to recognize problems when they see them because they don't know what those problems look like.

But I can give you a couple of clues. Gold is kind of like copper in a way. Sometimes, when gold has been harshly/improperly cleaned the color is off, it just looks wrong. Those are the ones most people miss. Or, sometimes the coin will not have the luster it should have in relation to the amount of, or lack of, wear on the coin. And usually these two things are almost always due to the coin having been over-dipped.

And yes, over-dipping is a form of harsh cleaning. When an over-dipped coin, copper, gold, silver, whatever, is sent to the TPGs it is still labeled as having been harshly/improperly cleaned. They do not have a separate code for over-dipping.

As for Matt's coin, I'd have to agree that I do not think it was harshly/improperly cleaned. But I do agree with NGC that the coin is a problem coin, just not for that reason. And this kind of goes along with another thread currently being discussed, the coin has many light scratches. But not the kind of scratches imparted by a harsh cleaning. But given the size of the coin, the rules are different, more stringent, for smaller coins than they are for larger coins, and the number of scratches, the coin is still a problem coin, IMO, and obviously in NGC's as well.

 

Boy ! I can see it's in an NGC slab Larry, but that first one sure looks like a fake to me. Color me confused

 

Seen a lot of coins struck with rusty dies but never saw one that looked like that. But they saw the coin in hand, I haven't .................

 

Even the TPG's have no set rules for determining if a coin is a problem coin or not. Neither does anybody else. There are merely guidelines, and making the decision is arbitrary. But to kind of answer your question, the size of the coin plays a large part in making the determination that it is a problem coin - the smaller the coin, the more impact any issues will have. In other words, if that were a silver dollar, then those scratches would be quite small in relation to the size of the coin, and the coin would probably be put in a regular slab. But on a dime, or any of the small denomination gold coins, those scratches exceed the limit because the coin is so small.

The same principles are applied with grading. Marks of a given size & type have a much greater detrimental impact on small coins than they do on larger coins.

As I said earlier, I don't think those scratches are from a harsh cleaning. But I too think the coin is a problem coin. I just think that NGC used the wrong designation on the slab. Instead of saying the coin was harshly cleaned, they should have just said Scratched on the slab.