A Tale of Two Tomans: help me select my next addition to the "Eclectic Box"

I think that's the one I'm gonna go for. I just like it better overall, despite the worry about the possible mount, which will hopefully prove to be unfounded.

Will probably pull the trigger Friday.

 

I had pretty much made up my mind to buy Coin #1, and relayed this decision to Najaf, the dealer, but he replied with this bit of info:

(I had mentioned to him that I was going to be submitting the coin and wanted to avoid a "problem" designation.)

So it appears my suspicions of a possible mount removal on Coin #1 were not unfounded. I must give credit to Najaf for his candor and honesty. I'm now waiting to hear back from him on whether he found a third candidate with the AH 1233 date. If I understood our conversation so far, I do think he's going to let me buy at the $350 sale price (+ S&H and fees), regardless of which coin it ends up being.

So it appears I might be buying Coin #2 from the OP, or maybe an as-yet unseen third coin.

Coin #1 appealed to me for the reasons previously mentioned, but if it's unlikely to straight-grade, I'll give it a pass, since I'm trying to avoid "details" graded "problem" coins in the Eclectic Box. (However, both my pieces of medieval hammered gold presently in the set ended up with "details" grades, which is why I'm a bit gun-shy on hammered gold at the moment, since my track record is 0 for 2 in that category so far.)

 

I did rather jinx myself by including the nonsense bacon option in the poll, but people have come to expect that, so I was forced by tradition.

Yes, I do always try to keep an eye on resale potential, because even though I'm a collector first and swapper/flipper second, my set is a rotating door, and my hold time on coins varies from a year or two to a decade or more. I'm not a "hold onto them for life" kind of collector, though there are some I do intend to hold for a very long time.

I do intend to get a second opinion from NGC on my two hammered gold medievals which PCGS gave "details" grades to. The Gelderland florin should have a reasonable chance at a straight grade, in my opinion. In retrospect, I do now see why PCGS dinged the Brabant Carolus d'or for mount removal, and I suspect NGC will as well, but I still intend to try it with them.

I have no aversion to NGC itself, despite my hating their white prongs that hang over the coins and interfere with photography. Since I have TrueViews of both these pieces from PCGS now, if NGC grades them, that's fine- I will use the basic coin images from the PCGS TrueViews in my "shadowbox" Photoshop template, without the PCGS cert numbers. This is, after all, what I do with my ancients, which I buy raw and get good photos of before they go into the NGC plastic.

 

Same seller, same site, so I'm assuming pretty equal photo quality.

 

I have not yet heard back from the dealer, Najaf, who was going to check his inventory for other pieces dated AH 1233.

It will be Coin #2 or an as-yet-unseen Coin #3.

I was ready to pounce on Coin #1 but the seller was honest and forthcoming enough to confirm my suspicions/concerns that it has an edge problem and is therefore not an ideal candidate for slabbing (though it is an otherwise lovely coin in most other aspects).

Note to self: keep an eye on autocorrect, since it likes to change "slabbing" to stabbing.

 

And I have just bought one of these, finally.

The choice, as it happened, came down to neither Coin 1 nor Coin 2 from the original post.

The same seller offered me three more choices, thereby also adding the options of Coins 3... 4... and 5:



I ended up deciding on what we'll call "Coin 3", which is the leftmost coin in the trio above.

"Coin 4" (the middle coin in the photo above) was a very close second in my estimation.

Really, there doesn't seem to have been anything wrong with "Coin 5" (the rightmost example above), either. It appears to be a touch smaller but has a nice round flan.

It was mostly strike that influenced my decision here.

 

This just in: PCGS has graded the coin I purchased MS62!

This is cause for celebration, as I was expecting a high AU grade.

Below is the temporary (seller's) image I've been using. As of this post the new TrueViews have not been added to the cert page just yet. I expect they'll appear in another 24-48 hours.

This is now population 3/0; in other words, tied with two other coins for finest graded, with none higher. (That isn't particularly surprising, though, since PCGS probably doesn't receive very many submissions of these. I have a lot of low-pop coins in my collection, since I tend to walk the slightly esoteric "roads less traveled".)