Not a huge gamble.... I couldn't quite read the reverse notation and the reverse picture was not very clear. It came in today. The Original picture looked like
Well done! Awesome variety! Congrats to you, for sure! Looks like a nice AU, possibly cleaned, but still a great find.
I'm not sure it was cleaned. I'm leaning towards VERY poorly handled/stored. Either way I think it's a DETAILS coin.
Do you guys know this seller? He does this a lot, then? My first impression was that this looks like pics that half the casual eBay sellers out there take with their cell phones. Anyway, by the sound of it, I think the OP probably got the better end of the deal since it appears the seller didn't highlight the rare "reverse of 78."
No, I’ve just seen enough sales on eBay to know when photos are intentionally hiding something. I see it more often in Germany ironically. Reverse of 78 is a great find, too bad it’s cleaned.
The seller has lots of feedback and is bellabambino Has a couple thousand items listed and hundreds of coins, mostly higher priced. Coin actually look better in person...someday I'll get a better way to take quality pictures.
Well, it’s a cool variety and I’m glad you’re happy. Perhaps the seller took the photos in haste, but I’m pretty sure he/she knew it was cleaned/details and tried to hide it. Either way, sounds like you made out just fine.
The types of scratches bunched together and going in the same direction (both sides) is a hint that it probably was scrubbed with something abrasive. Cleaning will also make a coin "appear" shiny, when it has in fact stripped off all the remaining original mint luster.