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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;physics-fan3.14, post: 4661796, member: 19165&quot;]Ooh, interesting challenge, CBD. </p><p><br /></p><p>First, I&#039;m not convinced that there is necessarily nefarious intent on the part of the picture-taker. Dimes are tiny, this is probably shot with a cell phone, and getting an in-focus shot is difficult even for experienced hand-held photographers. Then blowing up that slightly out of focus shot will give a pixelated result, exactly as someone else mentioned previously. </p><p><br /></p><p>The coin is obviously raw, but that&#039;s not a turn-off especially on early US coinage like this. Many people prefer them raw, and if you are knowledgeable enough to spot problems and fakes, you can do quite well with raw coins. </p><p><br /></p><p>Nothing about this jumps out as fake. Dentils are correct, design details and positions are correct, it appears to be a crisp strike. Obviously, I can&#039;t see the surface details enough to spot bubbles or anything, but you&#039;re not going to get that crisp of a strike with casting anyways. If this is a fake, its a *really* good one. </p><p><br /></p><p>Easiest to determine about the coin - it has nearly full details. Determining AU vs UNC from these pictures is impossible, so I won&#039;t even try. I would not wager UNC money on this coin, but at the very least it has high AU details. </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m struggling to discern luster in these pictures, but that is probably due to the thick toning. </p><p><br /></p><p>The toning has a natural look to me, it does not have the patterns that I associate with AT. AT would also probably be more colorful, even in these photos. Instead, this appears to be thick, natural toning. As someone mentioned earlier, there *appears* to be pull-away toning around the devices - a sure sign of old, natural toning. Pull-away is nearly impossible to duplicate, and usually doesn&#039;t recur on cleaned and retoned coins. In fact, I&#039;ve seen the toning pattern on this coin enough times to wager that with good photos, you&#039;re probably going to have some very attractive deep shades of blue around the rims. </p><p><br /></p><p>This toning also speaks to the originality of the coin - if it was cleaned, it would have been a long time ago. Unless there are a multitude of hairlines present, many collectors would have no problem buying this coin. </p><p><br /></p><p>In summary, I think that this would be a good gamble at mid-AU money. You might get unlucky and get something hiding some problems, but I think its more likely that you&#039;d get a pretty decent coin. </p><p><br /></p><p>I look forward to the next chapter![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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