Kind of nice - ordered yesterday, received today. I think the only thing that kept the 71 from being a higher grade is the lack of luster. Feel free to take a shot at the grades. The 70 is a snow-23 - I guess a minor DDR not really sure. Bought for the coin not the variety - did not really up the price. The white fuzzies are on the holder not the coin. As always all comments good/bad are welcome.
My pictures must make them look a lot worse than they are. And here I thought they were pretty close.
Very nice Indians... I would say that the 1870 is a solid 60-63 and the 1871 is a bit lower in the 50-55 range... My $.02 on your $.02 J
1870 - AU58BN 1871 - AU55BN Seeing wear on both, lack of luster on both, two nice AU's. I have to ask though, what is going on with the 1871 on the reverse at 6:00?
Okay - it must be the pictures. Plenty of luster on the 70 not showing through in pictures(nice cartwheel in hand) and the 71 is more subdued under the brown. T$ - a spot that just has not browned. The 70 is 64RB and the 71 is 62bn which I think is accurate for both. The 70 is more brown than red, but looks great in the sunlight.
Wow Mark this photos must be really inaccurate. I thought for sure I saw wear. Does the ribbon of the headdress mean anything? What about the hair? From what I see in the photos I see wear in both of those places on both coins. The luster isn't showing at all on the 71, and the 1870 looks to be dipped, due to the breaks in the luster I'm seeing in the photos, but on this one I'll just take your word for it. I'm the most familiar with this series, and took a hiatus from even learning about the series after I realized I wasn't going to to get the proof indian I wanted anytime soon, and the two 'perfect' ones I was going to buy sold. That was a couple months ago. FWIW, I really like the look of the 1871!
They are some beauties, but I agree the pictures are not showing the the true grade of these coins. Since I know the grades I would of guessed the same as T$. I'm sure they look much nicer in hand...
No way is this thing cleaned. Even the original post shows the luster around the rims. I did notice on every picture I took the minute you blew it up to the original size it lost the luster. Lets see what the simple little attachment looks like.
That view of the coin with the slab looks a lot better, and if that showed on the first picture I might've thought twice about my original grade of AU58, and looked at some other examples of lower MS examples to compare to see if it was an AU or if it was a MS coin. The coin looks like more of a MS coins now from that photo.
Now that I am scrolling up and down. The two look really different - the same can be said of the 1871(cept I did not take 30 or 40 pictures of it like the 1870 - playing with lighting. I still think if the 71 had a littler more brown luster it would have graded higher than 62.
Mark, those look like very nice high quality original brown Indian cents, and some very good dates with a neat variety too! Congrats! That 1871 does look to be an S-23. This is from Rick's Attribution Guide: S23 1870, Doubled die reverse, 10-R-III. Obv. 18: (RH) Large die lump on neck above pearl 4 & 5 similar to a top of a 7 digit. Die stage A: No die cracks. Die stage B: Die crack from the base of the date to the rim at 7:30.
