The scratch is in an out of the way place. It looks like a nasty staple scratch which is a no-no on a straight graded coin.
Sometimes you can see the difference. It need be no more than a spot in the field that is no bigger than a pinhole. Other times you can’t tell the...
The old DCAMs from the 1960s and before can be a lot pricier because they are a lot rarer. Only the coins that are DCAM on both sides count. The...
I have mostly seen MS70 treated coins in pictures, and what I have seen, I have not liked. This coin is maxed out right where it is. If you play...
The modern Proof coins, with their consistent DCAM surfaces, are truly lovely. There is a guy at my local club who submits these coins in slabs to...
The first picture shows too many marks on the neck and hair to be an MS-65. If that is an MS-65, then the 1864-L Cent I posted earlier in the day...
Yea, PCGS has no respect for NGC grades 99% of the time. When you ship a coin in an NGC holder to PCGS for the same grade, you have 2.99 strikes...
MS-63, Brown
When I was in high school, I dreamed of completing a set of Indian Cents. One of the key coins in that collection was the 1864-L bronze Indian...
This a tough one. If you remove the crust, there might not be much left. Sometimes things are so far gone that authentication is not possible.
That 1872-S Half Dollar looks too nice to be only graded AU-53. I wonder what was going on the grading room when that happened? And yes, that is...
I would go with the best coins you can afford. You need to go more slowly, buying the pieces you like, rather pushing things and filling holes all...
The ones that are made for circulation are. In 2009, the Lincoln 200 birthday cents that went into Proof sets were solid bronze. I think that the...
"Red" means that it looks like a brand new cent in Uncirculated condition. Once the coin starts to to turn brown, it is almost impossible to make...
Sets like this are sold as fund raisers, perhaps for a worthy cause. There is more charity here than numismatic value. For the most part sets like...
Unusual red color which you will not find on a coin you pluck from circulation, but beyond that there is nothing remarkable. The coin has spots...
Here are some answers to these questions of comments. The Proof coins were almost all sold as sets. The cent and nickel were one set; the silver...
The 1863 is one of the "thick, white cents" from the Civil War era. This one graded MS-64, shows the color of the coin when it was new. I looked a...
Coin investment types have been touting the 1954-P cent at least since I was young collector in the 1960s. I pulled a roll of them out of...
When comes to forming type sets, I rarely got hung up on dates. To me acquiring the most attractive coin was the objective. I'd open up the set to...
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