I am always skeptical/suspicious of "high value" coins these a days. With that in mind I was wondering what is wrong with this "au/unc" 75CC? it seems the photos are hiding, or is it one of those unslabbed gems? https://www.ebay.com/itm/133940790298?hash=item1f2f7e441a%3Ag%3Ag-0AAOSwxSphmWqI&LH_Auction=1
I think the seller needs some help with taking images. His other items for sell have the same look. I can't see much of anything about the Trade Dollar from his images.
I'd have deep trouble trusting a raw CC trade dollar with professional photography, let alone pictures of that quality.
I don't have the Trade Dollar chops to look at an image of one and tell whether it's legit. But when I see images as poor as these, and when I see a high-value coin that's raw, I assume the worst. I also put about zero value on the Sigma readout. As I understand it, you have to give the machine some information about the size and shape of the coin you're "analyzing", and I see no indication of what they told the machine.
What's wrong with it? Nothing that I can see other than being fake. It should have XF details throughout but the eagle's head looks like Play-Doh and many of the rev letters have no feet. The 2 0's in 900 aren't even the same size.
Take a look at the seller's completed listings. He's running through quite a stream of better- and key-date details coins, with many of them perched on that Sigma as "proof" of their "authenticity". I'm not sure any of them are fake, but it's a very odd specialty.
I'm curious - how on earth does that gadget read "pre1900" or even "US"? I'm not aware of any composition that magically changed after 1900. It sounds pretty hokey to me, like something they told the gadget to read, and not an actual reading. The same image is on most of their coins for sale.
The Morgan dollars from 1900 on have less lead in them than before 1900. The mint improved its silver refining operations. There is a slight difference.
You select the kind of metal you think you have, and the analyzer checks whether its resistivity matches that metal. I thought you also needed to specify the coin's size, but that's not true. I couldn't stand it any more, and looked up the Sigma User Guide. It addresses most of my skepticism about the machine. I still don't think I'll be buying one myself, but I'm probably done poking fun at them.