Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cpm9ball, post: 1525975, member: 24633&quot;]As Kirk said, scanners are rarely ever able to show the luster on a coin because it uses so much light in the scan that the luster is &quot;washed out&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is pretty easy to tell the difference between a scratch or gouge on a coin or whether it was on the die itself. A gouge on a coin will be recessed (incuse), and a gouge on the die will appear raised on the coin because the metal will flow into the void left by the gouge on a die. If you examine the gouge in the obverse field between Liberty and &quot;E P&quot;, you should be able to see what I like to call the &quot;crater effect&quot;. When the coin was damaged, the metal has to go somewhere, and it is most often pushed up and out along the edges of the gouge (like an impact crater.) </p><p><br /></p><p>Some people can tell the difference with the naked eye, while others (like me) will need a loupe or a microscope to tell the difference. Are you using magnification to view the coin? The only drawback with using a microscope under high magnification is that incused elements of a design can appear to be <b>either</b> raised or incused unless you <b>already know</b> what it is supposed to look like. The viewing of this raised or incuse image is called <b>perspective</b>.</p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t know if you&#039;ve ever taken mechanical drawing/drafting, but you can understand perspective by viewing a 3D drawing of a cube on a piece of paper. The paper is only two-dimensional (flat), and to show the third dimension, you need to see all the edges of the cube. It will look like a simple, six-sided framework. When you look at the framework, the cube may appear to be facing down and to the right or it could be facing up and to the left. It depends on your perspective if the faces are blank, but if you add, say, the pips like those on dice on the three forward sides, it is easy to tell which direction it faces. Of course, this is probably more than you really needed to know, but I hope that it will help you to understand the differences in your viewing perspective.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m including a couple of images taken with my stereomicroscope to illustrate how perspective can be applied when viewing the letters in <b>LIBERTY</b>. Are they raised or incuse?</p><p><br /></p><p>Chris</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH]200021.vB[/ATTACH][ATTACH]200022.vB[/ATTACH][ATTACH]200023.vB[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in