Hello, I wanted to show you some of the coins that i was able to find last week. I have not looked for US coins for a quite some time, so i was glad to find soembody offering some large cents. The 1797 i have attributed thanks to my Breen book as variety S-130 ("many incomplete Leaves"), it is an R-2. It is till housed in the 2x2 flip so the pictures that i have taken are not the greatest, and you can see some imperfections which are actually on the plastic film, not on the coins. The 1797 is actually dark brown/grey in colour. I cannot detect porosity, but the surfaces are not that smooth. Overrall the apperance is pleasant however. Please let me know your opinions on this coin, and what it net grade at. The other is a 1856 cent. It was adverstised as almost uncirculated. The colour is actually reddish, but a bit dull. Not shiny red. As usual, please let me know your opinions . At the moment i have the feeling that i may have overpaid for them, so second or more opinions are really welcome. Thak you all as usual, Eduard
First if you are happy with the coins then I do not see how you over paid. The 1797 I would grade vf20 or VF30. I do not know if it is the picture or the 2x2, but the date looks weak. By I am not an expert, but that is one nice 1797 cent. The cud mark on the left hand side also looks weak - so maybe it is just the strike. NICE coin! The 1856 I would say au-details recolored. It looks flat. I wonder why someone would have cleaned they coin. The details look nice and I think I just see a touch of wear around the hair. I can't really make out the 5(how close it is to the curl) and how close the one is to the bust and denticle. How about a close up around the date? Or go to Heritage and look at a 1856 n-8 an compare your coin to it. Another nice coin!
Mark, thanks for your comment. I looked at 3 1856 N-8's in the Heritage site. They talk about some very thin die lines at star 12 which i cannot see , either in the heritage pictures or on this coin.... However, here is a close-up of the date as you asked. I hope this will alow proper identification? Thank you for your help, Eduard
Very nice finds.:thumb: I like the look of the large cents, especially in the condition of your coins. Also I think any coin from the 1700,s is a treasure indeed.:high5:
1797 Cent i bought - a fake. Hello All, I thought it would be interesting for some to know how deceptive some countefeit coins can be, and how easy it is to make an expensive mistake: it turned out that the 1797 cent i bought a few weeks ago (pictures at the top of this post), and which looked so " real" and appealing in the flip, was in fact a fake. I noticed something was funny when i removed it from the 2x2 flip. The edges looked abnormally sharp, and squared off. Cents from this period have generally more rounded, bevelled edges. So i weighed it. Sure enough, it was significantly underweigth at 10.24 grams. This is 5+ % below the norm of 10.89 grams. I then compared the weights with the rest of my cents from the 1794-1800 period. All of them were within 1.5 % of the nominal weight. Upon further research i learnt that some very deceptive counterfeits known as the "Bay Area Cent Counterfeits" show exactly these characteristics. I was very lucky that the seller took the coin back, with no issues. He was as surprised as i was. This reinforces once again my belief - Buy only from knowledgeable, trusted sources. I thought this one was too good to be true, and in fact, it was. Regards, Eduard
Sorry to hear about that. Just curious is there a link to site with information on these counterfeits?
