New 20 cent piece

A while ago I was forced to sell the 20 cent piece I had, but today I just received a new one that I bought that's actually an improvement (and cost me slightly less!)





Any thoughts as to grade? Looks like a pretty solid EF to me.

Love obsolete denominations and short lived coins... no other US coin exemplifies both as well as a 20 cent piece lol...

 

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i was thinking vf personally but its a very nice coin one of my fav designs

 

I'm gonna say EF-40 but the coin looks cleaned to me. (I could be wrong.)

That is a VERY nice looking coin. Wish I owned it, neighbor.

 

It looks whizzed but I hope I am wrong.

 

Beautiful looking coin,but looks to be definately cleaned.Still a keeper either way.

 

Cleaned....sorry

 

Easy XF coin but I'm afraid it's cleaned as well.

Still a real nice coin and I love the series and all those odd denominations as well.

 

cleaned but very nice example .

 

You don't want it, I'll take it...

 

Wow, I was going to post this question hoping I don't offend the OP, but then I read all the posts before mine and it looks I won't be the first.

On the obverse, it looked like there were directional lines, but with scans, you can't always tell. But then I noticed that in almost every recessed point on the obverse, it was darker and didn't match the fields. I'm talking about the areas around the stars, around liberty, around the date, and also between all the lines around the rim.

I'm new to evaluating coins at this level. Since almost all of my coins are pulled from circulation, I've never worried about such things, until I pulled a few higher end coins out of circulation. So now, I'm just trying to work on my skills of how one would diagnose such a thing.

So feel free to tell me if I'm dead on in identifying the symptoms, or am way off.

Either way, I think OP bought a nice looking example of this type and it does contain about all of the details.

 

These were pictures taken by the person who sold me the coin; not sure if they're scans or pictures, but the fact the coin's color matches what it looks like in hand suggest probably pictures (scans are great at picking up coin detail but bad at picking up color). Having the coin in hand it's definitely not whizzed as someone posted, but yes, it's probably been cleaned at some point. (Virtually all coins this old have been at some point.) Not harshly though and not in a way that caused significant damage, so that's fine with me. I'm not rabidly "anti-cleaned" as long as the coin's not significantly damaged in the process. All the details are there, even where it's worn you can still see a hint of all the details, can just barely see the eagle's eye on the reverse, and "Liberty" is fully readable.

I've never bought into the idea that a coin having been cleaned at some point makes it worthless... it should lower the value a bit, but as long as it hasn't done been harshly it shouldn't somehow make the coin valueless. Besides, almost all coins this old that were intentionally saved by a collector have been cleaned at some point so it's not like you can avoid getting a cleaned coin unless you can find one in mint state (usually beyond affordability for me lol...)

Anywho I paid slightly less than EF money for this; seems fair since it's definitely EF with a little taken off the price for it having been cleaned.

 

I think you did well and I agree with your thinking on pricing. It looks like a lower to mid-EF coin that has been cleaned.

Nice find.

 

Clenaned.

 

The strange thing is... many other European countries use the 20/100 denomination, and I dont believe its too often that a country uses 25/100 - lol.

 

Sadly yes, it looks harshly cleaned. But, it depends how you define it. Still, I think it is a pretty nice coin, and I think you did okay on it. And if you really like it, then you did great IMHO. :thumb:

Phoenix

 

I'll bite. What actually distinguishes a coin that has been "harshly cleaned" vs. just one that is merely "cleaned"?

With the coin in hand, there are very few scratches, and what few there are, are all in the field, not on the devices. I've seen many cleaned coins that look worse than this that still wouldn't be called "harshly cleaned."

Not going to argue that it's been cleaned, but I wouldn't say harshly so. Not by my standards anyway. Maybe I'm more forgiving than some...

Anyway happy with my purchase, believe I paid a reasonable price considering, and it is a nice looking coin, cleaned or not. If I ever get rich and famous maybe I'll get a better one of these in the future lol... but for now I'm happy with it.

 

It depends... I know many countries that use 25/100 instead of 20/100. Haven't counted them to see which is more common... but even many European countries had a 25/100 coin before they switched to the Euro (Germany, France, Spain, etc.) Many non-Euro countries still do. Somewhere along the line people in the US decided they preferred 25/100 to 20/100, which is why this coin was so short lived. Canada tried a 20/100 coin briefly too, but that also fell in favor of 25/100.

Again not sure which is more prevalant but countries that have a 25/100 as opposed to a 20/100 are hardly rare.