Has anyone ever heard of a silver plated silver Barber dime? It sounds odd to me, but i recently received an 1898 Barber dime back from NGC i had sent in for mint error authentication for an overdate error. Instead of the error i suspected they returned it with the statement that it was silver plated. they said it is an authentic barber dime but it is silver plated. I dont get it. Why would that ever happen?
My guess is that it was used, or was intended to be used in some jewelry. The other possibility is that I was a science experiment. I have chrome plated cents and copper plated dimes that I have gotten in change.
Is there another grading service that would be a little more thorough with error coins? I really feel like they passed it over to quickly and just tossed it out. Would pcgs be much better? Someone told me anacs, but i heard theyve got a bad reputation now for something.
ANACS is certainly a good option. I don't submit coins to them because they're only operating in the US... but there are many error coins in ANACS slabs out there and they have quite a reputation for slabbing all kinds of tokens, varieties and errors.
If the dime has been plated you should be able to tell, just by weighing it, I doubt that a plated coin is gonna make it into a slab anyways because of the altered surface.
Plating won't add enough weight to be noticeable. If you check the surface with XRF (and it shows pure silver) and do a specific gravity test which shows coin-silver alloy, you've pretty well proved it. Even just the XRF test showing pure silver is enough to body bag it.
Without seeing a picture, I would assume it was plated to fool someone into paying a higher price for it
They "tossed it aside" because it's now a damaged, unappealing coin. Unfortunate that it's also an RPD, but damage is damage. Did they refuse to slab it? That may be because they were worried about the plating peeling and causing additional damage while in the slab; PCGS does that with some laminations.
