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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DaveIam, post: 521318, member: 17301&quot;]<b>Larger than normal post w/pics.........</b></p><p><br /></p><p>First off, thanks to everyone who responded to this thread. I actually stumbled upon this forum while trying to find out more about this coin. There is a story behind this coin, I purposely did not explain how I &quot;acquired&quot; it. </p><p>As I mentioned in my introduction post, I metal detect, have done so for about 10 years.During these past years I have been fortunate enough to find some pretty old coins. I instantly became very interested in the history that surrounds many of them.</p><p>I had never found a coin such as this dime. I actually had &quot;acquired&quot; this coin from the tailings of a privy dig. At the time I could barely make out the date. It had a very thick crust over 90% of it. As in the past, whenever I would come across such a crusted coin, my wife would clean it. The usual process goes like this:</p><p>soak in Kaboom for about 5 minutes, rinse, repeat until crust starts to come off.</p><p>Here is the strange thing about this coin, which has never happened before.</p><p>The crust was actually cracking off, revealing an extremely clean, fresh minted looking coin.</p><p>Here is where I think I really screwed up. The coin looked too grey to me, so my wife took an old diaper to it with Mr. Magic (non abrasive) metal polish. The pics I post do not really show what it looks like. I still laugh at my stupidity because at least 90% of the coins surface has the same sheen as a brand new 2009 dime!:desk:</p><p>I know this is dragging on, so I&#039;ll get to my reason for posting. I was excited about finding a key date, especially one with such clear, uncirculated detail. I took it to a coin dealer, without saying it was a &quot;dug&quot; coin. One of the first things you hear in the detecting world is to never tell a coin dealer your coins are dug. I find that very foolish now, after countless hours of researching and reading about coin collecting, grading, slabbing, etc....</p><p>I am curious though, neither the coin dealer/collector, or anyone here has mentioned environmental damage? I can look at any other &quot;dug&quot; coin I have and can see what I would call environmental damage. Yet, on this coin I cannot even find the slightest hint of this coin coming from the ground. It was obviously dropped 149 years ago, due to the clear, crisp strike still on it. Could the &quot;crust&quot; have had something to do with this? I do not know, that is why I am here in hopes to help me learn more about coins!</p><p>Another question I have is &quot;why would a coin collector opt for a non shiny coin?&quot; Believe me, I&#039;m not trying to make this coin something it is not, I am just trying to gain some knowledge here as I am very interested in learning more about what I find and how best to preserve future finds.</p><p>It would probably give some of you a laugh or even make some of you shake your heads in disgust if I were to post some of my more interesting coins and how I used to clean them! That will make for some interesting future posts. Thanks again for the warm welcome, you guys are great!</p><p>In the meantime, here are a couple of larger pics of the coin. I still cannot capture the almost mirror shine though. Any suggestions as to how? </p><p><img src="http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z171/CalDave60/1860S9.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><img src="http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z171/CalDave60/1860S10.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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