Hair over $230. Compared to other ones I've seen on the bay I think the price was fair. Hope it looks good in hand.
I'm not sure it was cleaned. It could just be the lighting used to take the image. It needs to be imaged out of the holder, flat to the lens, with a correct white balance.
Hopefully it'll be here by Saturday and I will upload more pictures of it. Now the hunt is on for my holy grail- 1909-S VDB Don't know what I'm going to do after my Lincoln set is complete! It's been 20+ years in the making.
It was cleaned. I copied the image and magnified it on my computer, you can see a darker area around the date that is pretty evident. The dark area is squared off, so to speak indicated that the fields were cleaned.
Here are some updated pictures. It does appear to have been cleaned at some point in it's life. I see the areas around the date and Liberty do appear darker, does that always mean a coin has been cleaned?
The darker areas around the devises is normal for circulated coins. They wear less (or rub the dirt off less) in the recesses than on the flat surfaces. However, you coin has both an odd color and an odd gradient. Look at these coin from Heritage.
Often but not always. Generally though, if there are areas that are lighter with darkness down in the recesses of the design, such as that in the wheat ears, there was probably a cleaning somewhere in the past. Also, when there is "stuff" down in the interior portions of lettering such as that in the word LIBERTY, there is a fair chance that the coin was cleaned and retoned. If the color of the images is accurate, a grader might say that the coin is unnaturally toned. That's terminology that they use to say that the coin might be a little unusual in color due to retoning. For a circulated coin, some of the coloring across the coin is almost too consistent. Often there is some variation to the toning caused by circulation. You can also see the squared off color difference around the date that indicates a possible cleaning where the person doing the job, so to speak, was careful not to mess with the date area. That can happen naturally though so you can't go by that for the entire analysis of a coins surface. Play with another average circ wheat cent. One that is common but shows wear. You can take some baking soda and a little bit of water and lightly use your thumb to clean the surface of the coin. It is good to do one or two so that you can use them to learn what a cleaned coin looks like. This one looks similar to one that may have been lightly "rubbed" with baking soda or believe it or not cream of tartar. These are both materials used by some to do a light but still noticeable cleaning of a coin. All that being noted, I would lean toward this coin having been cleaned but there is an outside chance that it was not. A coin can look different in an image vs. being looked at in hand. In any case, it is a very pleasing piece and I wouldn't complain if I had one like it
Yeah I wouldn't be too concerned about it, that's not a very harsh cleaning and it's still an attractive coin. Just something to know if you ever plan on selling it.
