2 clean grades... 2 cleaned... about what I expected number wise.. but I'll be honest didn't expect the 91 to get a clean grade and hoped the 57 would.. Ah well I'm happy lol.... 1st the coins... grades at bottom
I picked it up raw for 50 bucks and had no doubt it would grade well... I was hoping for a 65 but 64 is nice too I'm more excited about the clean grade on the 91s that surprised me I thought it was coming back "cleaned" if any of them did... These pics don't show the details the NGC pics do but gives you a better idea of why i grabbed the coin in the 1st place NGCs pics a bit flat
much better than my last submits. Sent in 8 coins and got beat black and blue. still lickin my wounds. Guess I'm not a good judge of grades after all.
Sorry, but it looks like NGC is now also in the “glamor shots” business, like PCGS which has its “True View” pictures, which are anything but that. The pictures make the coins look better than they are. Looking at these four sets of photos, it’s hard to tell what’s wrong the 1857 quarter and the 1859 cent. The quarter might be too bright, and there might be hairlines. The obverse looks like it might have been rubbed to clean it given the lack of detail and super sharp reverse. The Cent looks like it might have pickled surfaces (fine porosity) from an acid dip. From these photos, it’s hard to see that. The 1891-S dollar looks better than MS-61 in the photo. It must have a light rub. A scary thing is that Heritage has started to use some of these photos for their sales pitch. I was looking at a coin they had priced at $6,000. I had been looking for an upgrade for the type for a long time. When I checked to coin at PCGS with the serial number on the slab, I found that Heritage was using the True View photos. The photos of the whole slab made it look like a different coin. My point is these “glamor shots” are not good for Internet buying. They often don’t tell the true story about how these coins look in person.
I am as guilty of this as anyone. When I take a photo I try to capture the best angle and make sure the features are well-defined. If I do that right, you can conclude that, at every other angle, the coin does not look as good. Then when you see it in hand, you have to work to tilt the coin at exactly the proper angle, using worse lighting, to try to see what the camera shows. The coin in hand will look worse than the photo in almost every position, except the one that matches the photo. (This is one reason I post animations, which include 9 different lighting angles.) This applies even more strongly to toned coins. From straight on, they can look like a brown dirty coin. Only when the light catches the exact angle does the toning flare up into a blaze of color. I guess we can add "buy the coin, not the photo" to our list of advice.
I take those type of photos too. I also have "dead on" shots, that show no luster, which make the coin look worse than it is. Here is an example. This coin does show the mint luster in the first photo from multiple angles. The point is if you are buying or bidding on coins over the Internet, and that's all you have to work with, you need honest pictures. Sadly coin shows are few and hard and expensive to attend. The Internet has become very important to the hobby. If you don't post honest pictures of what you are selling, it's not fair.
Great results on the Morgans. Not surprised about the quarter, I thought that one had the lowest chance at grading straight. The surfaces look somewhat too bright and the dirt left on the arm and around the left obverse stars isn’t a good look.
