Post your Lincolns!

Would love to see it!

 

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With this post I will have posted what I have from 1909 through 1933. It lacks two coins that are completely out of my budget, the 1909-S VDB and 1914-D, and two I hope to have someday, 1915-S (lost, alas!) and 1923-S.

These 1933's all have a deep rich color and lots of luster. They all look great animated, but I'll only post one of those - I don't want three of them flashing against each other and giving someone a seizure.




These replace the iPhone photos shown in post #4056.

I am not going to include myself in that category. But you can find out who the real masters are by reading the thread Post your coin photography set-up. That's what I did, and it helped me improve my pictures from absolute garbage to what you see above. I'm still looking way up, though, to the heights attained by many of the other members here. Don't worry. If you have a question they are generous with their time and will try to help you get better.

 

awesone coins and pics! Are you building a year set or date and mm?

 

It started out as just the Philadelphia mints for the first five years of production. Then I decided to extend that further into the teens and twenties. Then the thirties. Then I got the Dansco with all the 1934-1991, with most proofs.

Now I have all the years and mints except 1914-D and 1915-S, with 1923-S in the mail. I don't plan on 09-S VDB, 22 no date, or any doubled dates.

Then my nest egg will be gone and I will focus on photographing them and appreciating them.

 

that is an unbelievable range of coins....im going to try and limit myself to no more than a full set of early dates, mostly bn,rb (my eye finds these more appealing than rd, wallet does too). Really want to focus on choice coins with nice color and strike. Id much rather have a well struck bn coin than a flaky, weakly struck red. I also want to include matte proofs (already have a 1912) but ill likely never get my hands on an '09 vdb. Its crazy how the cents take hold! I havent really paid much attention to them since i was younger, then, wham! Im buying choice coins, lol!

 

May I have an opinion on Grade?

 

OK, last visit with the 1910-S until I have it reslabbed.

Here's an interesting conundrum: This new-style PCGS slab, which laughed at headlight polish and refused to lose its' marks even under 2000 grit sandpaper, is remarkably sensitive to heat. Keep in mind, I've polished both cars and 4x8 acrylic sign panels with a high-speed polisher; I'm fairly well aware of what even cloth will do to paint or acrylic if you employ a heavy hand with a non-orbital machine. So, when I approached this thing with my Dremel, it was with the foreknowledge that it could probably burn pretty easily even with the soft felt drum I was about to hit it with. And I've been cutting and polishing with a Dremel since, well, I wore the first one out and the second is fifteen years old now. Like that.

And I still managed to burn the slab.

The polishing initially went well; I used the second of the six available speeds on my tool and a brand-new felt polishing cylinder. Not just a near-flat disc, a cylinder of felt as tall as it was wide because I wanted to use the side to polish rather than the edge. That's one of the ways you avoid burning the subject. I practiced for a moment on another PCGS slab to ensure the amount of pressure I planned to use was appropriate, and it was. And it worked wonderfully. Took off the tiny scratches from the wetsanding in seconds, over the face of the coin. Then - after checking my work - I moved outward to the periphery where I hadn't expended any real effort with the headlight polish to remove the sanding scratches. I added the slightest bit of extra pressure, knowing the problem was worse, and it gouged the plastic instantly where I was a teeny bit heavy on one end of the felt.

(insert extended period of profanity here)

So now the slab has a 2mm x 15mm gouge up and left of the coin. It's shallow enough - I'm pretty fast when the equivalent of saving my numismatic life is at stake, and I think I got the tool away in maybe two-tenths of a second - to probably be removable without trashing the slab, but, you know, I think I'm tired of playing with it.....

The gouge is not visible in appropriately-cropped images of the coin; it's a few mm above the top. For this last pair of images in the old slab, I tried something new. I X-Acto'd a Nickel-sized hole in a piece of heavy matte black poster paper, and used it to eliminate any chance of the slab reflecting light into the lens from areas beyond the perimeter of the coin. I lit it with a single 45w R20 Incandescent flood at 10:00 and about 15 degrees from vertical, set white balance to Tungsten and shot it RAW. In RAW postprocessing, I finished correcting the color - it wasn't perfect - by manually manipulating the color temperature in Kelvin numbers until the poster board returned to black. The final setting was 3200k, just about right for an incandescent but telling for my camera, because "Tungsten" should be just about that number and it apparently wasn't. Down the road I'm going to have to see what "Auto" does with that. I then circle-cropped the coin and filled the background with black, because some of the texture of the poster paper was interfering; it wasn't far enough out of the plane of focus to disappear.

The final result is a teeny bit underexposed, because I like it, and therefore just a touch darker than in-hand viewing. However, the color is just about exactly - on my monitor - what I see with the calibrated Mk. I Eyeball under the loupe using my usual light. That was the goal.





Oh, for the record, I shot these with the inexpensive El-Nikkor 75mm rather than my preferred Componon-S, because I needed greater working distance for the incandescent lamp. Total magnification was about 0.75x, well within the working capability of the lens.

 

I use my Dremel - medium speed (6 of 10) but I use a muslin wheel with headlight polish. I have only "burnt" a couple of several hundred slabs I polished and none lately.

 

I am thinking that the look of a possible rub on Lincolns high cheek bone is only the slightest infraction of light, from being so close to the Slab. Well done and IMO way better than the True views.

 

Wrong cents.

 

Nice job, Dave! Your slab gouge wouldn't deter me at all, sweet coin!

 

Something from Angel Dee's at FUN, recently. 1915 is tougher than you'd guess.
Lance.

 

Apparently nice ones aren't that rare.

 

My 1915 is one of my favorites. I already posted it in another thread.

This coin has spotting and a big carbon spot by the shoulder. It's actually fairly ugly. But the back is glorious, so I just turned it over for display.

These photos are replacements for the ones in post #4057.

This year set catches me up to where I already posted 1935-1943 in this thread. I'll skip over those when I post again.

 

This is not at all my experience, SuperDave. In my photography business I polish hundreds of slabs a year. Without question minor scratches on the newest PCGS slabs are super-easy to clean up with Meguiar's PlastX. Far easier than earlier slabs, and night-and-day better than the soft-plastic NGC slabs.

I would never use a dremel on any slab. I think it can be utile at a very slow speed. But hand polishing works very well. And the clearer color (less blue) and exceptional optics are bonuses.
Lance.

 

In full red and struck that as well as Lance's they are.

 

Received this 58 D in change last week.
Nicest wheatie I ever found in circulation.