Photographs taken of my small gold coin collection have just prevented me from undertaking an awkward email exchange with Sarasota Numismatics.

I was looking at my NGC Registry Coin Photo of my 1914-D Indian $5 NGC MS64+ (CAC), and just for the fun of it I looked up the coin using the Verify NGC Certification.

The coins did not match.  Uh Oh!!!!!  How could this be????

The Coin Verify photo showed the upper-center prong (a tri-prong holder) "just touching" the right side of the "E" in LIBERTY on the left side of the prong, whereas my NGC Registry Photo showed the upper-center prong "just touching" the "E" with the right side of the prong.  The coin is rotated clockwise by more than the width of the prong.

To make matters even more incredulous, both the Verify and the Registry photos show a small fiber to the left of the coin and a slight amount of grit on the lower left prong.

NGC Verify Photo

NGC Registry Photo

The coin has never been out of my possession, and has hardly been moved around during my 8 years of ownership.

Could it have rotated in its holder?  Has it suffered the fate of Death Valley moving rocks?

After all of my worry, even preparing an email to send to Sarasota Numismatics, I looked for a photo to send them and I came across photos in my Photo Library that they had provided when I first ordered the coin:

… and one I had taken one month after its purchase.

My worries are over, the coin is legitimate, has somehow managed to rotate in its holder, and may very well rotate further.

Anyone here ever scan an NGC barcode successfully?

What information comes up?

How did you do it?

Did you need special equipment, a downloaded app?

I blurred out my Certification Numbers because I have something to lose of considerable value.  I would have done the barcodes too, but I don't know how anyone other than an NGC "higher-up" would know how to access information from them.

Funny how we all got the question wrong.

VKurtB, blemishes do show up less, but when I look at photos by others that have seemingly infinitely-precise detail, the coins take on a "sterile" appearance; there's no "romance" in the photos.  It becomes an obsession of "is my coin more perfect than someone else's coin."

All of my coins are far from perfect, so I like to see them "through rose colored glasses.

I'll guess #1, too.

One thing I've found is that if you pull up your coin photo stored in Photos on your computer (Apple 13" MacBook Pro, in my case) and compare that photo to what is seen when viewing your same Registry photo, the Registry "version" is dumbed down in sharpness.  Considerably so.  And this is especially the case when you enlarge both photos side-by-side.

For this reason I'm very pleased with my Registry "version" since it can only look so good, if I want to show the whole slab.

The single piece of advice I can offer for taking cell phone pics of coins is:  work on your lighting.  All of my cell phone pics were done in the kitchen on the kitchen island and the recessed large bulbs in the ceiling — 4 of them; Philips Indoor Flood BR30 — contribute 65 W each, there is one of those pendant lights that comes right down to 20" above where my coins were imaged, and it had a 40W crystal clear bulb in it.

Then I also used, in conjunction with all of this, a Euro Tool 5x Magnifying Lamp (currently $35.19 Amazon) that has an 11 W fluorescent circular ring-bulb and the light has a gooseneck stand for positioning the 5x lens/ring-bulb to the coin, and two stacks of books, one on each side of the coin so that I could make a platform of whatever height I needed to get things to "work."  (wrong height… add or remove books)

The cell phone then took the photos from above everything, looking through the 5x magnifying lamp.  To get things to gloss up a little further I may have incorporated a Mini MagLight and experimented with it from an extreme oblique-angle.

If you fool around like this, you're going to find just the right "everything" to get some attractive photos… and then you "warm" them just a touch in your Photos Editor.

Question

In my hundred year gold type set, which features a 1776 Carson City Double Eagle, the double CC mintmark has them (the two Cs) almost touching each other.

When I go to the Coin Explorer for the coin, the representative 1776 CC photo shows a wide gap between the two Cs.

Would dies for the year be created such that they would be significantly different in this regard?  Why?

Recently, I was considering chasing Registry rank a little, and as a sanity check for my gold type set, I wondered what would be involved with trying to replace two coins I own with much more desirable coins that currently can be found on the Internet.  What I learned was the effort and expense would be so difficult and cost prohibitive that the "normalcy" of my life would be "turned upside-down."

With everything considered, I'd have to risk bankrupting my future, hope for a successful crossover on one of the two coins, manage to get the two coins I currently own included in the "purchase negotiations," relearn how I had taken photos five years ago so that the new coin photos would be similar to my other Registry photos, and after doing all of this my Registry gold type set would change from an okay rank of 60 to merely another okay rank… rank 30.  A real eye-opener on "what not to do."

It's nice to "dream," but it's preferable to "leave well enough alone," and enjoy this hobby with "both feet planted firmly on the ground."

On 12/4/2022 at 9:24 AM, ldhair said:

When I was really young, the Blue Book was good for me. I used it as a log to keep track of my collection. Just enough room to write in the date I bought a coin and the price I paid. When I bought a computer the book had most of the information I needed to move over. Today, I have almost a perfect record of every coin I own. 

The one advantage I have of only having a 14 coin gold type set collection is that I still have all of my original paperwork of buys and returns, as well as Crossover and Conservation paperwork.

When the paperwork is compressed between thumb and forefinger, it is about 1/4th inch thick, and kept in a manila folder, inside an old teacher's desk that a friend dropped off where I used to live, since he got it when he worked for the township public works department.  (boy was his boss mad when he learned what became of the desk; I still have it and when I got it, first thing I did was refinish its top/applied a few coats of polyurethane)

Was wondering the same thing.  Bald Eagles supposedly exhibit prominent yellow talons and beaks, not seen in the photo.

Since many others took photos too, maybe one of their photos could uncover this mystery.

On a computer, go to the NGC Coin Explorer, and search the coin.

Read up on the counterfeiting warning article provided therein and compare your coin pic to the Coin Explorer's pic.

The roughness of your coin doesn't look right.  They should look much smoother, to make the incuse design "pop."

The first rare gold coin I ever collected was my AU53 1881 CC $10, purchased ten years ago for $1,000 more than NGC was listing it as.  (at the time I knew nothing about rare coins)

A year later it bounced up to my buy price and stayed thereabouts until October 2021, when it soared $2,100 overnight, and it is now bouncing around twice my buy price.

Not just the $500K coins have shot up in price the last couple of years.  As all ships rise with a rising tide, now, more than this, just locating desirable coins has affected collecting strategies in a big way.

Always a pleasure reading your reviews, Charmy, and not so much for the coins… but rather the beautifully prepared/served food… and of course the wine, too.

"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."

Never.

However, have done a few Upgrade to Scratch-Resistant Holder, and several PCGS to NGC crossovers.

Never had a crossover failure.

Gambling at best, conniving at worst.

On 12/18/2022 at 10:53 AM, Hoghead515 said:

One actually looks pretty rough.  Looks like someone threw it in a junk drawer or let a 3 year old play with it. Very nice coin inside but the slab is very distracting trying to admire it. The other slab is not so bad.

 

Everytime I see that slab and the other it really bothers me. Does anyone have any recommendations to fix it?

 

I figured Id try a rubbing compound first. Couldnt hurt it anymore than it already is. The few submissions Ive made I always chose the option for the scratch resistant holder. In my opinion its well worth the extra $5.00. 

NGC Scratch-Resistant Holders Temporarily Unavailable

Posted on 11/18/2021

NGC anticipates that Scratch-Resistant Holders will be back in stock in six to nine months.

76 views 1:00pm 12/11,21

To the best of my knowledge NGC is still out of the scratch-resistant holders, with no timeline for when they'll have them back.

Playing around with a Dremel Tool on plastic slabs is a lot different than playing around on a plastic headlight.

Think of it more like playing around on plastic scratch-resistant eyeglass lenses.  Less than a satisfactory outcome can be expected, and you'll then see your "beginner's luck" handiwork instead of the prior scratches, going forward.

hubris
noun

arrogance, conceit, haughtiness, hauteur, pride, self-importance, egotism, pomposity, superciliousness, superiority; informal big-headedness, cockiness.

I was wondering if this thread was still on the boards.  I tried searching for it but it wouldn't show up, so I then went thirteen pages back and checked every page individually from there.

Found it an additional 30 pages back!

Bump.

Might help "would be" collectors who wonder what sort of creative ways may exist for them to form their own unique collections.

I miss Luis Rukeyser and seeing him each Friday on Wall $treet Week… his opening monologue.

Used to live at my grandparents, room and board free (my grandmother: "you save your money"), helping them get by in their elder years.

Religiously, on every Friday night, PBS was watched just for this show.

Also, my grandmother would take her transistor radio with her to each sitting-room during the day, and listen to 1010 WINS news radio to get intraday financial updates.

This experience wore off on me, and gave me the mindset to invest, and to save, and be aware of the markets.  All good!

Tell us a little about this "coin."

Were you searching for it, do the TPGs grade these things, can they be found without the hole-punch, what is its diameter, and what did it cost?

To find one of these without the hole-punch… well, it would make a great poker-hand down-cards "cap."

Reading the article right now.  "Wow," is all I can say!

Happy my small gold coin collection was completed eight years ago.

In my U.S. Au type set, which is entirely housed in NGC holders, I have one of each of these gold types.

My only complaint is that NGC’s holders are tri-pronged for these type coins — smaller gold dollars, in comparison, are four-pronged, as well as every other gold coin in the collection — and the tri-pronged holders have an imposing appearance which I’m not particularly fond of.

You guys were getting me worried for a few minutes here, throwing around NFT without me knowing what it stood for.

Wondered if some of my investments were NFTs.
Checked monthly statements; holdings are ETFs.

NFT:  Non-Fungible Token
ETF:  Exchange-Traded Fund