Mohawk

Oh man......how many of those kinds of things did I see walking into the coin shop I used to work at......fancy holders with pretty much garbage coins in them.

Congrats Mike!!! That is indeed a 1998 Wide AM Lincoln Cent!!! Nice find for a change jar

And that's the important part. One of the few U.S. coins that I consider part of my collection is a 2020-W Salt River Bay Quarter. I'll never part with it because my Dad found it in his Laundromat money and he gave it to me. It's a gift from my Dad, so that coin is very special to me.

Dreams do come true sometimes. There is this one sestertius in my collection.....I actually was the underbidder in the auction for it. I lost it and I was heartbroken.....this thing is beautiful. Then, the highest bidder returned the coin because it's lacquered!!! And I was able to buy it for my highest bid. I still look at that coin almost daily and I'm so happy she ended up with me in the end.....I posted her here before but here's a refresher:

Update-one 1981-S Type 2 Lincoln Cent, the 1970-S Large Date Lincoln Cent in PF 68* Red Cameo and all of the NGC graded SMS coins have sold and the links have been removed. I also added some raw 1979-S Type 2 coins and the 2021 Reverse Proof Silver Eagle Set I have to the thread for consideration. Thanks So Much!!

Hello and Welcome!!! One thing I'd recommend is going over to the Newbie section and introducing yourself. More members will see your hello there.

Completely cool, my friend. Destroy that sucker!

Hi Mike!!! In looking at your photos and thinking about it for a bit, I'm thinking AU 55 on this one. It looks like she's got some slight wear on the high points of the design on both sides. Still a nice coin though! ~Tom

Well said, Jonathan!!! Very well said!!!

That would be some environmental damage, which is caused by the metal the coin is made of chemically interacting with different chemical agents in the environment. This is extremely common on Zincolns as copper and zinc are both highly reactive metals and zinc becomes even more reactive when plated with another metal.

This may be just the right term for this phenomenon.......

Awesome!!! Make sure you share it with us when you get it......I'm always game to take a gander at a good Caligula

Yeah.....those are certainly not my sentiments whatsoever!! I think the series is a great idea actually, and if they weren't going to have that butt ugly Laura Gardin Fraser obverse, I'd actually be giving thought to collecting the silver proofs myself. It's a series that would actually appeal to me highly if not for that obverse design. If they had just stuck with the Flanagan obverse, or done a new obverse altogether....maybe something with Liberty, I may very well have found myself collecting a U.S. coin series again for the first time in over a decade. But, in true U.S. Mint fashion, they found a way to take a great idea and ugly it up with some resurrected relic design from the 1930's by someone who, in my opinion, was something of a subpar artist. It's ironic......all of the great female artists who have lived through the centuries and who are living now and the U.S. Mint finds a very uninspired and rather dreadful work by a barely known (outside of numismatic circles) female artist to put on a series of coins honoring great women. Only the U.S. Mint could have managed this kind of a flub up. They should give up on the Washington design and put a truly inspired design by a female artist on the obverse of these coins, IMHO.

It sounds like you found the answer to that one, my friend!!! They're problematic. As far as people that certify ancients, NGC is definitely the top dog, but ANACS is fine for ancients if you find a coin you like graded by them. ICG used to grade ancients, but I don't believe they do any longer. I heard that their ancient people went to ANACS, so since it's the same people, I think ICG ancients are okay too. I'd feel comfortable buying an ancient coin from any of the three. Anyone else isn't reputable, so treat the coin as raw if you see a coin you like graded by another service. Don't pay a premium for the grading. Now, please keep in mind that my stances regarding the grading services only apply to ancient coins and no other area of numismatics.

Little Boots does indeed get a bad rap. Caligula coins are scarce, partially due to the relatively poor economic conditions during his short reign and more so due to Nero's debasement of the denarius during his reign, which led to the melting of a lot of the earlier coinage. There goes Nero ruining things again, like he ruined the lyre, poetry, parties at the palace, Sporus' life and the Olympics. The Caligula I have is the Vesta As, which is his most common type, but it's still a Caligula coin nonetheless. VCoins, which is a place I buy a lot of my coins from, has some Caligulas for sale right now. I'm hoping this link takes you right to the Caligula page: https://www.vcoins.com/en/Search.aspx?search=true&searchQuery=Caligula&searchQueryExclude=&searchCategory=0&searchCategoryLevel=2&searchCategoryAncient=True&searchCategoryUs=True&searchCategoryWorld=True&searchCategoryMedieval=False&searchBetween=0&searchBetweenAnd=0&searchDate=&searchUseThesaurus=True&searchDisplayCurrency=&searchDisplay=1&searchIdStore=0&searchQueryAnyWords=&searchExactPhrase=&searchTitleAndDescription=True&searchDateType=0&searchMaxRecords=100&SearchOnSale=False&Unassigned=False My Vesta As has a nice green patina but it's a little rough. It only cost me $299.00, which for a Caligula is a pretty good deal. I couldn't pass it up,

I'd like to be proven wrong in my assumptions on these, but I don't think I will be. I am familiar with the Laura Gardin Fraser obverse design that they're going to use.....and warning of another unpopular opinion on U.S. coinage aesthetics coming from the boards' resident Faustina the Younger guy coming.....and I heartily dislike it. I'm actually not a big fan of any of Gardin Fraser's art, at least that I've seen. It's entirely possible that there is a work by her that I haven't seen that I would enjoy. But I did go look at the line art of the reverses, and they look alright, honestly. I actually really like the Anna May Wong and the Maya Angelou designs. But that obverse....man, that obverse.....it kind of kills these for me right out of the gate. So, for me, great idea and worthy people honored but destroyed by what is, in my opinion, a poor obverse design choice.

That's a real beauty and a real treasure. You should be very proud of that piece.....it's gorgeous and an amazing piece of history!! It beats my oldest coin in age considerably (my oldest is an As of Caligula). Thanks for sharing that with us!!!

That's weird.....I'm using Chrome and I'm having no issues. I have no idea how to advise you, sadly.

Agreed......sadly with what I collect, gold is also ridiculously expensive!! Faustina may have seen fit to have her face stamped onto a ton of silver, orichalcum and bronze, the same doesn't seem to hold true with gold . Aureii are just expensive in general, too, regardless of ruler.

Very nice!!!! What a cool piece....do you have any pics? If so, I'd love to take a look at that......and I'm certain I'm not the only one who would like to see it.

No problem Andrew. I'm sorry the news wasn't better. If it's any consolation, it's a heartbreaker for me, too. An actual Greco-Bactrian coin in that condition would be a real treasure that I would love to see, even if it's only in pictures

Hi Andrew!!! I'd say it is a fake and the patina is a part of it. It also doesn't look like it's made of silver to me. Overall, what I think is that it's a tourist coin. In countries like Italy, Greece and Turkey, which were centers of ancient civilizations, people often make fakes of actual ancient coins in metals like pewter or other base metal alloys and give them patinas through chemical means, to sell to tourists as cheap souvenirs of their visit. There are a lot of these out there. My parents lived in Turkey for four years before I was born and every major tourist site they went to had at least one person selling tourist coins. Thankfully, they didn't buy any, but some of the other expats they knew bought many of them. Your coin has the classic look of a tourist coin, at least to me. I hope that this is of some help, my friend. ~Tom

If you're looking for modern gold, Apmex or Modern Coin Mart typically have pretty good selections of slabbed gold. You could also check out Great Collections and see what Ian and the team have listed up right now. Those are all good sellers that do a lot of business. This isn't the collecting world I live in at all, so I cannot speak to actually buying slabbed gold, but people who do collect in this area seem to be happy with all of these sellers.

I'm with Roger.....the different labels don't impact the value at all in most cases. When you find the right coin at the right price, just snag it regardless of the label.

Hello and Welcome!! I'm with the others.....your coin is exhibiting post-minting damage. It's only worth face value.