powermad5000

Ha! I thought that to be directed my way. We would have a better world minus the fakes. As we would have a better world minus many bad things. But the world is the way it is so I find it best to try to navigate around some things. Happy to see you HC doing the Norton or McAfee test run on it on my behalf. I appreciate your boldness to forge ahead into areas where I may not go myself! I will have to update my list of your endearing qualities that I find charming.

Don't take it so personal. I've been hacked about 4 times and what it ended up showing me was on all but the last time, it was something I did to open myself to it. The last time it happened to me, I am not sure what they were going after because I am just a worker bee who is very low on the wealth totem pole, but those had to be some real pros at it. If it helps you understand better, I don't even open links from family. Once you get hacked several times, you kind of just go into a "lockdown" mode. It becomes an automatic trigger response.

No offense taken. Seeing as we are on the internet, it probably comes off more as so, but even in real life, I guess I can seem a little "dry". We are all good sir!

You are most welcome to share ungraded coins here. In fact, many people do to ask their questions about them, as well there are some members here who (believe it or not) do not submit their coins. Feel free to come back and post whatever you like.

Well, it depends @Henri Charriere. What if it was Pennie's (attribution : female) cents?

I just reread that and you are correct @JKK. It did not come out the way I intended. I shall edit immediately.

If you submit the coin for Variety Plus services and pay the appropriate fee, then NGC will include the FS number on the label if it is a well known variety and they accept the FS number for the specific variety. I have several slabs graded with the appropriate FS number on them. Here is just one of them. You can check your coin in Variety Plus before submitting it to see what numbers they recognize for a specific variety. Note, NGC does not accept all of the numbers you may find on sites like Wexlers or from the Cherrypickers Guide.

Hello and welcome to the forum and to the hobby! I would like to address the points you have made in this post. #1 - Coins do not have to be certified to be worth more than just face value. Just walk around a coin show (especially a major one) and you will see tons of raw coins with values in the hundreds, thousands, or tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those who know coins can check them for what they are and know just how rare or not rare they are without having them graded. They will also know the value of them raw. #2 - Coin values are not solely determined by grading. See #1 above. Collectors who know what they are looking at with a raw coin in hand with proper knowledge will know the level of rarity and value of what they have in hand without grading from a TPG. Collectors will know what is FMV pricing versus hype pricing versus dealer pricing versus rip off pricing. We speak of this side of collecting constantly here in this forum with people posting damaged coins thinking they are super rare and highly valuable errors. #3 - All error coins are unique. The thing is damaged coins are simply not errors, no matter what seller says they are. We see plenty of purported error coins being posted here which are simply damaged coins. Some are made to try to deceive, some are made as experiments, some are made accidentally. People who collect errors, which is a special niche in the hobby, will know what is and what is not an error without it having to be graded. Raw coins that are errors are worth money without being graded, however, depending on the error, some types of errors are considered more common than others (clips and strike throughs being common versus a Washington quarter struck on a Mexican Peso planchet as an example). Also, the condition of such errors is just as much a determination of value as it is with normally struck coins. #4 - You are 100% correct on this point. Which is why we advise people to steer clear of these self purported expert videos. On YouTube, however, there are some legitimate videos with educational content worth watching made by NGC, PCGS, ANACS, the US Mint and US Treasury. I am glad to see you did post this though and it hopefully makes more people aware of these untruthful videos posted on YouTube and other sites. Unfortunately anyone can post a video on there whether or not the information in the video has been vetted and is accurate and correct or whether it is simply some of the garbage out there. Glad to hear you learned from your experience and also glad to hear you are continuing your endeavors in the hobby!

This is an old post. You would be best to start a new thread with your coin. That said, from what you have provided, your cent is NOT bronze. It is in fact in line with the weight of a zinc small date cent which is supposed to weigh around 2.5g. I am not sure how you arrived at a weight of 2.82 grams with the coin in the holder unless you came up with this weight before it was submitted to PCGS. If it was derived in the holder, there will be a variance of the weight of the plastic from holder to holder. If it was weighed before being holdered, it could have been struck on an overweight planchet but I would also then question the calibration of your scale. You cannot simply look at a coin and determine its metal content and confidently say what type of metal it is solely on a visual basis. Even all these things set aside, a bronze cent of this date would weigh between 3.05g-3.08g. Therefore, there is no way your cent is a bronze transitional. One more thing to note, in your attempts to remove environmental damage, you did further damage to the coin. If this was truly one of the unicorn cents everybody is seeking, your actions would have caused what otherwise would have been an expensive coin to become highly devalued. In the future, do not attempt to clean your coins or use methods to "improve" the surfaces as they will only damage the surface.

Hello and welcome! I note a lack of responses to your query. That is probably due to the fact that most of the volunteers on here will not click on links. I myself are one of them. I simply cannot trust links provided in this digital age of malware and cyber security so I don't click on them. If you post pictures instead of a link, I am sure you will get more responses to your question.

This is a great place to come to and learn. And this hobby is fun. It becomes not fun for people when they follow misinformation, however. When you come here, you will get solid correct information. I hope you keep going in the hobby as the longer you stick with it, the more fun it gets.

This is what I responded to. In my response, I did not give you my life story. I simply gave you an answer. Sorry you took offense to my response as condescending. I tried to explain it as I know is all.

It is not too close to call. It is not even close to being a CAM. In a cent with CAM, the letters A and M are nearly touching at the bases. On your cent, there is plenty of gap between the bases of those letters. I have never heard of "die pooling" in my 45+ years of collecting and I do not think it is something that has just been discovered after hundreds of years of minting of coinage. Once a coin is struck from a set of dies, the details on the surfaces of the struck coin cannot move over time. Also, once a die has been manufactured, those details are set in place until the die breaks or wears out and is replaced. I am not sure what this concept is of die elements moving over time. Basically, what I am saying is a CAM cannot shift on the die to become a WAM. It just is not possible for that to happen.

I have been collecting for 45+ years and know this was not produced in the mint striking chamber. I am also in the camp this was a vice job. One dead giveaway is the incuse and backwards lettering on the memorial. A coin with raised lettering was pressed into the reverse. Dies are made with a negative image so the struck coin becomes a positive image. This means the die is made by removing metal from the die making a recess for the metal from the strike to flow into. If somehow a coin was double struck after being rotated, the design elements would still be raised above the surface, not incuse. This book you referenced has been becoming more mentioned on the forums here with accompanying requests to review coins that are damaged intentionally or accidentally. It seems whoever authored this book had little to no experience with coins as they are attributing damage to being errors. I would recommend you to throw out this book and purchase a Redbook of United States Coins as well as a book titled ANA Grading Standards for United States Coins, 7th Edition. Error collecting is a niche in the hobby and takes its own special advanced education. If you are in doubt on whether a coin is an error, you can try to look it up on the website error-ref.com. If you can't find an example of your coin on that site, it is not an error and most likely damage.

This is a poor example of a counterfeit. The surfaces are terrible. I am not sure if that is from a poor casting process or if it was sandblasted to try to make it look "old". Also the details are very poor and uneven. The circular details on the reverse are not even and are misshapen. They are also quite mushy. Even a genuine strike with significant wear on it would not look like this. Hopefully that answers your question as to how one could tell it is fake.

Hello and welcome! Being I see this "doubling" effect completely surrounding some letters and numbers, on both sides of the coin, and it is a mushy sloped like doubling, I would have to agree with the other determinations that this is die deterioration doubling. It is not true doubling nor would it be a DDO or DDR.

I agree with @Sandon. I know you can request special labels such as photo labels (think Ben Franklin's face on a Franklin Half Dollar slab or Abe's face on a Lincoln Cent slab) or request to have a pedigree on the label, but signed labels are an entirely different thing. I don't think labels are available "for sale". You can buy slabbed coins with signed labels but as an individual submitter with no provenance to be able to claim a connection to the signature, I don't think you have any other way to get them except to buy them already slabbed. You can post this question in the Ask NGC forum, but I think their response won't be much different than you are hearing here.

The lack of the rim negates that it was from a grease filled die. Even a grease filled die would still have the rim intact. It is possible this was a dryer coin and the obverse was stuck somewhere that it did not sustain any damage. More likely, this seems to be a piece that was artificially created to look like an error, possibly made by someone looking to deceive someone and scam them out of their money. Even capped dies still have a rim on the coin struck with a capped die.

It took me a sec, but then I saw it and I thought the same thing as Mike. Abe has a booger. It sure appears to be a plating bubble although it could possibly also be a small die chip. Either way, neither would be a mint error. Plating bubbles are just a problem that the mint faced in making these copper plated zinc cents. Die chips are considered poor quality control.

Hello and welcome to the forum! Thank you for better secondary pics with closeups. Your quarter has a mildly deep scratch across the reverse. The displaced metal on the sides of the gouge are most easily seen in the field above his hat, and also across the letter D in UNITED, but I do see displaced metal all along the gouge in the coin. A true cracked planchet error (of which I own one on a Mercury Dime) begins at the rim and extends inward, but is evidenced on both sides of the coin as the metal of the planchet is actually cracked. Being this gouge on your quarter is on one side of the coin only, also reaffirms that the planchet is not cracked and the line is simply a gouge, or post mint damage.

Hello and welcome to the forum! Being this is an old thread you just reopened, as for your Morgan @RonR2663, the New Orleans Mint was known for having less than high quality strikes to begin with even on uncirculated examples. The amount of space inside the O was not expansive to being with. Your coin has worn down to what I believe would be a G4 level as the rims themselves which are meant to protect the details of the coin from wear have basically worn flat at the stage your coin is in. It looks to me from the photos you have provided that the excessive wear has basically worn the O mintmark down on your coin to a level that it is blending in with the field of the coin. In my opinion, there is nothing special to note on your coin, just heavy wear.

To me, this is why things of this nature should all be opened and inspected. I would not buy one unopened in the first place as it is my money and I want to see the coins I am buying. Also why I didn't last long playing the "roll" game. Maybe I am alone on this, but I will open any roll or anything sealed as I will be the end of the unopened mystery. Thanks @Sandon for providing a photo of the contents of this particular box. To me it is very insightful.

Grime or gunk or dirt will buildup on the surface of the coin and sit above the surface. Toning, while I don't know how thick it actually is (most likely in microns) is basically even with the surface and also it is important to note that light toning will still show the original surface underneath with proper lighting. Dirt, gunk, buildup will not allow the original surface to show through.

Thank you for the additional pic of the reverse. Although it is blurry it is good enough to see that it is not a split planchet. I do see the U complete with some displaced metal at the top of the U sort of filling it in and making it appear to look like a D. This coin apparently took a good hit as was stated that obliterated the last T in TRUST. There is no error on this coin. It is merely damaged.

Being the mintmark is part of the master die your nickel cannot have an RPM. Mintmarks are no longer added to the dies by hand. Also, I see a step like "doubling" in your photos with no split serifs, nor complete secondary images. Therefore, it is merely strike doubling.