Looking for an unbiased opinion..........

I am looking for opinions on this coin. I know it's a key date. This pic does not really do it justice. The detail on this coin is extremely as close to mint as I have ever seen. I acquired this with some other coins awhile back, and had just recently found the time to go through them. This one had been cleaned at one time. How would one grade such a coin?
I am new here and hopefully will be getting some other pics of coins up. I also have many other questions on the subject of coins which I am hoping can shed more insight into what I have.
Any comments are greatly appreciated!

 

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Plusses for detail and lack of defects; minuses for lack of any luster whatsoever and less than spectacular eye appeal. Final opinion - MS62

 

Hi David,
Now I know I'm in the right place! Being new to this, can you explain "lack of luster" and what do you consider "eye appeal"?
I know my questions may sound stupid, but I really mean it when I say "I am new to this!" LOL!
I will be posting my reason for asking all of these questions after I hopefully receive some more replies.
Thanx!

 

[FONT=arial, helvetica][FONT=arial, helvetica]luster In numismatics, the amount and strength of light reflected from a coin’s surface or its original mint bloom. Luster is the result of light reflecting on the flow lines, whether visible or not.[/FONT]

The cleaning process removed the original mint luster and instead left it with dull darkness at every point that I would expect to be brightness. For example look at the steel pennies in davidh's signature and you will see brilliant luster and very nice eye appeal. The fields are reflective and the design and inscription are bright. When I look at your coin I feel like I am looking at a negative of a photograph.

Other than that the coin has some very nice details
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With details like the luster was probably lost through too many dips
May have been done to remove unsighty tone or some other debris on the coin.
Nice detailed coin though

 

it looks like it has been more then dipped....

it looks polished to me... price wise it is worth somewhere back of XF money...

 

Based upon what I see in your images and what I understand about coins, here's my observations/opinions:

DETAILS: Sharp and appealing

SURFACES: Dull and lacking Mint shine that should be expected on a coin of this grade.
No hourglass reflectivity. Just "flat" surfaces.
Cleaning (dipping) is the mostly culprit.

GRADE: Ignoring the cleaning, I still don't think it's MS.
Why? The reverse in particular shows breaks in the texture(?) on all of the high points (dark vs. the light grey elsewhere). That indicates to me some degree of wear. So we're talking AU at best.
Throw in the cleaning and I think it'll grade out at XF-40 (Details).

 

I agree! It has been well over-dipped and appears to have had a light once-over with a polishing cloth. Taking into consideration the MS details, a TPG may give it an EF-45 to Au-50 grade.


Frank

 

hard to tell if the high points are a different shade because of wear or because it has been polished. Not my expertise on the SLs but my first reaction was AU details, XF net because of the cleaning. But on the otherhand the shield tells me UNC, too bad, nice coin still.

 

AU details, dipped at best, cleaned at worst.

 

AU details, harshly cleaned IMO, net grade about an XF-45, and about the same money.

 

I'll still say low MS. Although it hasn't had the best of care, I don't see any evidence of wear anywhere.

 

:crying: to such a nice coin.
XF-45

 

The OP started out "Looking for an unbiased opinion.........." I don't think that is possible here. Many times when there is a question of this nature we ask for a larger or more detailed picture. Although the pictures provided are relatively clear, they just aren't large enough and don't show enough detail for us to make a definitive determination of condition.

 

I agree that it was not cleaned but dipped to death was/is my interpretation of the coin albiet nice details

 

I guess its all about how you interpret the images. I see the frost as the areas that whatever was used to polish were not able to get into... much like the halo left around devices when a coin is whizzed. But you could very well be right. No matter what I think that most of us agree that the coins surfaces are not original no matter what happened.

 

I think many of you are confused by the odd lighting (both diffused and low angle) and look of the photograph.

I'll wager that the coin is significantly better in-hand.

 

Larger than normal post w/pics.........

First off, thanks to everyone who responded to this thread. I actually stumbled upon this forum while trying to find out more about this coin. There is a story behind this coin, I purposely did not explain how I "acquired" it.
As I mentioned in my introduction post, I metal detect, have done so for about 10 years.During these past years I have been fortunate enough to find some pretty old coins. I instantly became very interested in the history that surrounds many of them.
I had never found a coin such as this dime. I actually had "acquired" this coin from the tailings of a privy dig. At the time I could barely make out the date. It had a very thick crust over 90% of it. As in the past, whenever I would come across such a crusted coin, my wife would clean it. The usual process goes like this:
soak in Kaboom for about 5 minutes, rinse, repeat until crust starts to come off.
Here is the strange thing about this coin, which has never happened before.
The crust was actually cracking off, revealing an extremely clean, fresh minted looking coin.
Here is where I think I really screwed up. The coin looked too grey to me, so my wife took an old diaper to it with Mr. Magic (non abrasive) metal polish. The pics I post do not really show what it looks like. I still laugh at my stupidity because at least 90% of the coins surface has the same sheen as a brand new 2009 dime!:desk:
I know this is dragging on, so I'll get to my reason for posting. I was excited about finding a key date, especially one with such clear, uncirculated detail. I took it to a coin dealer, without saying it was a "dug" coin. One of the first things you hear in the detecting world is to never tell a coin dealer your coins are dug. I find that very foolish now, after countless hours of researching and reading about coin collecting, grading, slabbing, etc....
I am curious though, neither the coin dealer/collector, or anyone here has mentioned environmental damage? I can look at any other "dug" coin I have and can see what I would call environmental damage. Yet, on this coin I cannot even find the slightest hint of this coin coming from the ground. It was obviously dropped 149 years ago, due to the clear, crisp strike still on it. Could the "crust" have had something to do with this? I do not know, that is why I am here in hopes to help me learn more about coins!
Another question I have is "why would a coin collector opt for a non shiny coin?" Believe me, I'm not trying to make this coin something it is not, I am just trying to gain some knowledge here as I am very interested in learning more about what I find and how best to preserve future finds.
It would probably give some of you a laugh or even make some of you shake your heads in disgust if I were to post some of my more interesting coins and how I used to clean them! That will make for some interesting future posts. Thanks again for the warm welcome, you guys are great!
In the meantime, here are a couple of larger pics of the coin. I still cannot capture the almost mirror shine though. Any suggestions as to how?

 

yea, the conglomorate probably encased it and kept it from getting exposed to many of the compounds that would oxidize it. Sounds like it was maybe a heavy clay content? I do some shooting myself and have found nice wheat cents in a clay soil content that still had some red in them. Its basically encapsulated, shame, would have been awesome the way it was, but at least you are learning!