pardon my ignorance

Obviously I am new to this site, but am complimentary as the other forums I have researched seem to "eat their young" so to speak and have little to no tolorance for ignorance.
In the hopes that I will have some tangible remains left for verification purposes after you guys chew me a new one.......I will continue on!!!

I recently came into a quite scattered and varied collection that belonged to my great-grandfather. I have done my research and have concluded that his attempt may have been to collect only first issues. I have a few morgans, shield, several seated liberties, and so on.
I have decided to liquidate as I am a lover of the history and not the coins themselves.......that and I am quite broke and am using the returns 2afordthegas!!!!
I have a capped liberty that has some sort of flaw that I can't find the proper verbage for. It is directly to the left of the 4th star on the right side. Not a hole, looks almost like a bright silver plug. I am hoping some one can tell me what this is.
I attempted to send a pic, but got an error.
PS I am also a chick which explains this simple question turning into paragraphs!!!!!

 

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From your description it seems it might be an imperfect attempt to repair a coin that did have a hole. If done expertly it would be hardly noticable.

 

Would this have been done..........repair attempt I mean 40-50 years ago? original owner died in the early 50s and they have been in a box in grandmothers closet since?

 

Sounds like a plugged hole. Quite common in older coins. Keep trying with the pic and I'm sure we can tell you for sure.
Guy~

 

Welcome Brandy! And yes please post picture. We will help where we can.

 

First off, this wasn't a bad question at all and I probably would have asked on here myself.

It could have been attempted 40-50 years ago. I'm not an expert on this but from looking around at many auctions, it seems that a lot of people at some point in time liked punching holes in old coins and wearing them as jewelery from what I gather. It's possible that was the case with that coin and maybe your great grandfather was the one who tried repairing it?

BTW, do you mean capped bust? Half dollar?

I use photobucket for posting pics. They've improved it quite a bit lately too.

 

had to resize, i hope this gets it

 

go me..........thanks for the instructions..........I see the pic. Hope you guys do too!!!

 

yes capped bust!!!

 

Welcome to the forum and I know what you mean about some of the other forums.

While I am not an expert on this topic, your coin looks like it has had some type of tooling, perhaps to cover a hole (as others have mentioned, this is known as a plug). Unfortunetly, this was done in a way that is really noticeable and will affect the value of the coin.

 

makes perfect sense..........I wonder though if it was punched and worn as some sort of jewelery why there seems to be so much remaining detail. You would think the star would be worn where it was attached. Nevermind, guess the wear doesn't matter much on this one since it's value is cursed by the hole!!! Like I said originally I am into the history..........I just wonder where the coin has been!!

 

Thanks for your help everyone.........I will certainly visit often!

 

Yeah, it looks like some sort of plug. FWIW, if the coin was normal, without the plug, I'm guessing it would grade out as maybe a Fine. Which going by the newest 09 red book and blue book, might sell for around 90 on ebay or you could get roughly around 30 from a dealer.

But that is without the plug in it. And this is assuming it isn't some rare variety. Just a plain 1829. The capped bust halves are one of the most complicated series' in the hobby with many different types and varieties. You'd have to show the reverse to properly identify it completely.

The plug and the damage around it will have a negative affect on the price, unfortunately. Otherwise, it's a nice coin.

I'd just hang onto that one, IMO.

 

I agree looks like it is plugged. Other than that it looks like a nice honest wear coin.

 

here's the rear

 

Here's a little more info on it for you. From coinzip, I would peg this one as being a O-105 variety which is fairly common. It was the only one I found, which like yours, the I in Pluribus lines up directly in between the T and E in states. The rest seemed to match also as far as I can tell.

There were a total of 3,712,156 1829's minted, all in Philadelphia. Obviously no mint mark because at that time, that was the only mint.

These are made of 0.8924 silver and 0.1076 copper. At 13.48 grams, these are 0.386 troy oz. of pure silver. Which today is selling around $18.10. Which means the melt or raw bullion value of the coin is 7 bucks (minus the plug). So if you do sell it, try to get at least $7!

 

welcome to the forum. Its a very friendly place

 

Warning Will Robinson! Spock can be over freindly.

Ribbit

Ps: Welcome to CoinTalk, Nursie! :hail: