Hello all! I have been reading the posts for awhile, and decided to finally join the group recently. I have been collecting for many years, but only recently decided to get more involved and learn more about the hobby. Over a period of years in the mid to late 1990s, I purchased some Russian roubles from dealers at the Chicago Int'l coin show, and finally decided to have a group of them certified due to recent fears of counterfeiting. I was very pleased with the majority of the coins slabbed by ANACS, but was caught off guard by two that came back TOOLED/CLEANED. One also had RIMS FILED on the holder. I consider myself to be a decent judge of coin grades, but I apparently missed the tooling completely on these coins. My questions to the board - 1). What are the most common tooling signs to look for? I have the slabs in my hand with a 5x magnifier and I still am not picking up any obvious changes to the coins. I feel a bit embarrassed about what I am apparently missing. Is there a reference book or website I could study to learn more about this unfortunate practice? 2). I honestly do not know if I will hang onto these particular coins due to the quality issues. If I sell them on eBay with accurate descriptions and clear visibility to the ANACS comments, would others on the board see anything wrong with this? Thoughts? They are not worth a tremendous amount, but I still consider them to be decent collectible coins. Unfortunately, I am questioning if I want them in my long term collection (By the way, I have been on eBay since 1/99 with 100% positive rating and a few hundered auctions, so this is just a fun hobby for me and not a business). Thanks, and I look forward to being part of the board. p.s. - How big can the images get? I have a more detailed image of obverse and reverse of each in 500 DPI (~140K each), but I didnt know what the size limit was.
Howdy btr - Welcome to the Forum !! You ask good questions - here's my attempt at answers. When I looked at the first pic the tooling jumped out at me. But that's because I've looked at a lot of coins over the years and after a while - you just get used to how they are supposed to look. But let's see if I can explain it. First of all - look at the overall condition of the coin and grade it. To my eye there is a good bit of wear on most of the coin - I would grade it VF. And the detail for the most part, especially in the center, is not sharp and clear. But take a look at the wing on the right - see how deep the grooves are as compared to the rest of the coin ? This is to me the most noticeable area and I would immediately suspect tooling. This area should be worn just like the rest of the coin but is not. Tooling is done in hope of fooling someone into thinking the coin has more detail than it really does. Now look at the rim between the M & H. See what looks like fine scratches in the rim ? Those are file marks. This is usually done to remove bad rim dings. There should not be uniform scratches like that on the top of the rim. And if you could examine the coin edge face on - you would likely see a small depression in that area where the metal was removed. As for the cleaning - that is most obvious of all. See how dark the coin is around the rim and in the denticles ? That's because when they cleaned it - they couldn't get into those fine, tight spaces to remove the dark coloration that once covered the entire coin. Now coin 2 was a bit more difficult - I had to look at it for a minute or so to see the tooling - but it's there. The first place I noticed was in the sideburns and around the ear. And if you look at some areas in the hair - you can see deeper grooves there as well. And lastly the triangle and rays over the head. As for the cleaning - the fields are covered with hairlines and rub marks. And there are some dark spots in the denticles. But the head - look at it - see all the dark and light splotches around the ear and forehead ? That's cleaning. As for selling them on ebay - the slabs do a good job of providing an accurate description. So no, there would be nothing wrong with you selling them - just post pics of the slabs. But if I were you - I might keep them as a learning tool until you get to where you can recognize these problems. As posting pics here - if you get over 100k you're gonna have problems and it won't work with the Attachment function. Try to keep them under 50k so those with dial-up connections won't have to wait so long for the pics to load. Or - if you have your web site where you can host the pics - just post a link and you can have your pics be as large as you want.
GDJMSP - Much thanks for taking the time to explain what I missed. I think you are correct about not putting them on eBay for awhile. I am going to take some additional time to study them and perhaps take them to the next show I attend as a basis for comparison. Here are some URL links of bigger 500DPI pictures of each coin for anybody interested in checking them out in more detail: http://www.lyndareiner.com/coins/1839_OBVERSE_500DPI.JPG http://www.lyndareiner.com/coins/1839_REVERSE_500DPI.JPG http://www.lyndareiner.com/coins/1807_OBVERSE_500DPI.JPG http://www.lyndareiner.com/coins/1807_REVERSE_500DPI.JPG
uploading images If you don't have a web site to upload images you can use http://www.imageshack.us/ I found it very simple to use...
