Sandon

An administrator for NGC's parent company already told you that it is not a real coin and could not identify it as a legitimate collectible. The U.S. mint never released any small dollar coins with Gasparro's design! It's highly unlikely that NGC or any other reputable grading service would encapsulate or grade it. You may wish to clarify this before spending your money to submit it!

Although some of the members have given @J. Morgan Sr some good advice on handling a numismatic estate, only one has referred him to a dealer directory (NGC's) from which he might find a suitable dealer in the Memphis or Tulsa areas. Coin World also has a dealer directory that can be searched by location at Home Page | Coin World - Find a coin, bullion, medal, and paper money dealer (right click for menu to open). The Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG), which is an organization of high-end dealers who are required to abide by a code of ethics and fulfill other membership requirements, also has a directory of its dealers at Find A PNG Dealer (memberclicks.net) (also right click for menu to open). Unfortunately, I don't know any dealers from those areas myself. I assume that @J. Morgan Srdoesn't know from whom his relative purchased his coins or much about coins or how much he spent on them. I agree that he should purchase a current or recent "Redbook" (A Guide Book of United States Coins, 2023 edition is most current) to try to sort possibly valuable items from those that are likely of low value and not worthy of separate appraisal. This book can be purchased from its publisher at whitman.com or through other sellers such as Coin World's affiliate at amosadvantage.com. (The latter also sells the Scott stamp catalogs.) As the coins are over 50 years old, he should be aware that any U.S. dime, quarter, or half dollar dated 1964 or before is composed of 90% silver alloy and currently worth about 15 times face value in silver alone, that half dollars from 1965-70 are 40% silver and also worth a premium, and that all silver dollars (dated through 1935) are also 90% silver and generally worth some premium over silver value. Obviously, any coins composed of gold are valuable. (Rare dates or varieties of coins in any metal may be valuable as well.) If there are foreign coins, he should also be on the lookout for pieces that may be gold or silver. The NGC World Coin Price Guide may be found under the "Resources" tab and "Price Guides" menu on the NGC home page. I hope this helps.

@BobBumbler--If you are truly interested in collecting coins, you should "show [your] face around here again"! To be successful, you must learn about coins through books and other resources, speak with experienced collectors and dealers, and study the coins themselves. What you should have learned from your experience are (1) rarities are almost never found in pocket change, (2) before submitting a coin to a grading service, you should have sufficient knowledge about the coin to be reasonably certain that you have correctly identified it, and (3) you should also be reasonably certain that its rarity and condition warrant the costs associated with certification. Here is a post I made describing some print and online resources that may be helpful to you:

I've also seen a "W", standing for "white", on NGC graded coins with this old label style.

Why didn't you ask us this question before submitting this coin to a grading service? This coin is clearly a large date and worth face value in this condition whether brass (95% copper) or copper plated zinc! Please refer to the photos in your standard "Redbook" or, in the event you don't have one, below are the photos from NGC VarietyPlus: This is the small date, which doesn't match yours--note particularly the shape of the "8" and "2" and the difference in thickness of the two sets of numerals: . This is the large date, which clearly matches your coin:

@PNGento--No, those are not recognized grading services. The coins in them may be overgraded and possibly aren't genuine. However, you should collect coins, not holders, and if you acquire sufficient knowledge, you can judge most coins without regard to their being certified or by what service. Some coins are best enjoyed in albums or plastic holders.

Welcome to the NGC Chat Board! As this forum is for questions regarding the NGC Registry, your inquiry would have been better placed under the forum for "Newbie Coin Collecting Questions". (From this page go to "Forums" and "Home" to find the list of forums.) I have been a collector for over 50 years, some 15 years before grading services existed. While coin shops were fairly common decades ago, most dealers today conduct business at coin shows and conventions and/or through websites. At coin shows you can compare the inventories of a number of dealers and get to know the dealers themselves. While it is preferable to obtain coins through reputable dealers or purchase higher value or frequently counterfeit or altered coins that have been certified by a reputable grading service such as ANACS, NGC, or PCGS, it is fundamental that you acquire knowledge about the coins you wish to collect, then develop your own tastes, and not rely entirely upon the judgments of other collectors, dealers, or grading services. You do this by reading, speaking to knowledgeable collectors and dealers, and, last but not least, studying the coins themselves. I'm not sure what you mean by "really just getting started collecting" or what your budget is. (It's less of a problem making a mistake buying a coin for $10 than when buying one for $1,000!) At a bare minimum, you will need basic guides to the coins you wish to collect, a grading guide, and current price guides. If you aren't familiar with or don't know where to obtain these resources, please refer to the post that follows: I don't think I've conducted business with any dealers from Arizona. If you insist on buying more expensive material before you've become familiar with it, you might want to obtain it from dealers who are members of the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG), as they are well-established dealers who are required to abide by a code of ethics, have a substantial net worth, arbitrate disputes and fulfill other membership requirements. There is a member directory on the PNG website at www.pngdealers.org. Coin World, one of the publications I refer to in the above post, publishes an annual dealer directory by state but does not endorse the listed dealers. The Phoenix coin dealers the Coin World directory lists are Arizona Coin Exchange, Inc., P.O. Box 9356, Phoenix, AZ 85068, (602) 863-9088, C and C Coin and Stamp, 3404 N. 24th St. in Phoenix, (602) 553-8038, Empire Coins, LLC, P.O. Box 71095, Phoenix, AZ 85050, (800) 524-2431, and Master Creations, 3145 E. Chandler Blvd., Suite 109, Phoenix, AZ 85048, (480) 704-7847. In my opinion only higher value coins ($500 or more) are worth submitting to grading services and, here again, one must have the knowledge to determine the likely grade and value range of the coins you submit. You should also familiarize yourself with the fees and other costs and requirements for submissions at the several grading services before even considering submitting any pieces to them or removing any coins from existing holders. (By "less desirable grading companies", which ones do you mean?) I hope this helps.

That 1875 Seated dime, notwithstanding some minor rim damage, is a nice original Ch. VF specimen. I recommend putting it in a mylar flip, hard plastic holder, or coin album to preserve it for future generations.

@Brandx galb-- If you are offended, I apologize. I have seen a number of posts with similarly concocted or misrepresented pieces posted by people with likely intent to defraud. You may have instead been the victim of such a scheme. I hope that you didn't pay much for this piece. (How did you "come across" it?) I have been a collector for over fifty years, and most of the regular participants on this forum, whom I have never met, are knowledgeable collectors as well. You can learn a lot from them, but you must be willing to learn. The coin to which you are comparing your purported "mule"--a 1978 Canadian cent struck over a 1973 U.S. cent--is in fact something quite different. It is not a piece made outside of a mint by someone who joined two different coins together but is a normally struck U.S. cent that was subsequently fed into a Canadian cent press, probably intentionally and wrongfully by a Canadian mint employee who hoped to profit from it. In my opinion, however, neither piece is a legitimate "error" made by accident during the minting process. (Most genuine "mules" of modern coins, which are also struck on a single blank from mismatched dies, are also intentionally created by dishonest mint employees.) We have an old saying, "buy the book before the coin." Nowadays books are supplemented by good online resources. If you wish to succeed as a coin collector, you must learn about them by reading about them, as well as by speaking to experienced collectors and reputable dealers and examining many coins yourself. For the specialized area of mint errors, you need to gain an understanding of how coins are made to know which purported "errors" are likely genuine and which are not. Not all genuine mint errors are valued by collectors, so you also need to know which ones are or aren't. One recognized online resource for mint errors is www.error-ref.com. For more standard references regarding U.S. coins generally, in case you are unfamiliar with them, please see the following post that I made: I hope this helps.

How could anyone, even a non-collector, not know--or at least strongly suspect--that this purported coin was made from two different coins from two different countries of two different compositions that were sawed in half and fastened together? There's no way that the obverse die for a British Penny of the type minted in London, England from 1953 to 1967 (or a similar Commonwealth issue) could have been combined with the obverse die for a U.S. half dollar minted in Denver, Colorado in 1978! It's also obvious it was made from two different planchets (blanks), one a normal homogeneous copper alloy British penny blank with a plain edge and the other a normal copper-nickel clad U.S. half dollar blank from 1971 or later? The plain edge on the penny half and the reeded edge on the half dollar half also indicate that two different die collars were used. Did the original poster really think that anyone on this forum for collectors would be so gullible?

@pigeonman333rd--Your "two headed" 1963 cent is what is known as a "magician's coin", as such pieces have been used to create illusions by magicians (or, in this case, to cheat someone who called "tails" on a wager). I have a similar cent that has two reverses. You can see a seam running down the center of the edge where the two halves were joined together. Please place your posts as either new topics or replies to related topics, instead of intruding into someone else's unrelated topic as you have done here and elsewhere! (Your addition of an example of a "BIE" cent to my topic on these, however, was an example of an appropriate reply.)

I assume that the Administrator was away or busy today. Regarding your inquiry, you should find the following topic informative. Click on the title or central portion of the insert below. (You can answer most questions regarding the registry by looking through the "NGC Registry Help and Instructions" section at the top of the NGC Registry Forum home page.)

For me it has usually taken one to two full business days and not more than three. The coins sometimes appear on the "My Competitive Coins" list and can be added to my sets a day or so before NGC sends me an e-mail informing me that they have been approved. (You have to add the coins to your sets.) Bear in mind that the only PCGS certified coins that can be included in the NGC Registry are U.S. coins, not world coins.

This coin exhibits "clash marks" that result from the coinage dies coming together in the press without a planchet (coin blank) between them, resulting in parts of the image from each of the dies being struck into the other and appearing as upside down, reverse images on coins subsequently struck from these dies. Coins with clash marks are interesting but generally not of much value to collectors. (I do remember a much stronger clash on another Lincoln, Memorial reverse cent that was popularized for a while as the "prisoner" cent because Lincoln appeared to be behind bars!) Please note that the Coin Marketplace forum is intended for the posting of offers to sell or buy coins. Your post would have been best placed under the "Newbie Coin Collecting Questions" forum.

I recommend that for proper illumination of coins you use a lighting source such as a desk lamp with an adjustable neck instead of or in addition to the light on the device you are using to take the photos. The little LEDs on these devices tend to make all coins look oddly shiny in the spot where the light hits and too dark elsewhere. If you're using a computer to transmit the photos, the operating system's photo application should be able to rotate and crop your images for a better presentation. If you're using a mobile phone, I would expect that it also has such an application. I bought a digital microscope to photograph coins early last year, and I still have to spend time adjusting the lighting intensity and angle and the focus to take a satisfactory shot of each coin. It takes time to learn but is worth it.

@pigeonman333rd--The unnatural shininess of the surfaces should have told you that the coin was cleaned or polished. If you want to buy uncertified coins for substantial amounts of money, it pays to learn by looking at certified specimens, even if you can't afford them, so that you can tell what they look like with original surfaces.

Given the obscurity of this issue, it's unlikely that you will find any meaningful pricing information for a PF 70 grade, as there have probably been few if any reported recent transactions. (How many have even been graded by the major grading services in that grade, and how many were issued to begin with?) I understand that the online NGC World Price Guide is managed by the publishers of the Standard Guide, so the print version, which wouldn't be as current as the online version, is unlikely to have this information either. My own emphasis is on U.S. coins, but it is my understanding that the madness over the number "70" is far less intense for foreign coins than it is for U.S. coins. Pieces grading 70--meaning that no flaws can allegedly be seen under low magnification--are barely distinguishable from pieces grading 68 or 69. If I were you, I wouldn't pay $450 for this coin, for which there is probably low demand, but would try to buy a decent looking "65" or better for a reasonable price.

@Taylor7--The photo of the edge shows a bright red copper core, just as one would expect on an uncirculated or nearly so normal 1971-D Kennedy half dollar! (On a worn one it would be brown.) Compare this with the edge of any 1965-70 half dollar, which will show a much lighter colored 20% silver core. Respectfully, I don't know why you thought this one was silver clad. @EagleRJO and others--It's often not necessary to debate the merits of weight, specific gravity, XRF, chemical or other tests in identifying or authenticating coins. Often, it is sufficient just to know what they look like!

Under the Marketplace Guidelines a seller is supposed to "include pictures showing the grade, or at least describe the grade for offered items." The item is offered ungraded and without photos. The other thread which he incorporates only has a photo of the obverse. A photo of the edge would be most helpful, as if silver clad it should not be largely mint red or brown in color. I'll have additional comments under the other thread.

I had previously refrained from participating in this thread because the original poster had simply asked a question as to where he can find a certain type of machine, which i can't answer. He now insists that he has a 1971-D Kennedy half dollar struck on a 40% silver planchet even though weighing the coin and testing it on the machine have both given him the "wrong answer"! My first question to @Taylor7is this: If you believe you have such a coin and want to sell it for thousands of dollars, why haven't you sent it to a reputable third-party service such as NGC, PCGS, or ANACS? In today's numismatic marketplace it is highly unlikely that any serious collector or dealer would purchase such an item uncertified, especially without an opportunity for in-person inspection. Like the Supreme Court, these services may not be final because they are infallible, but they are infallible because they are considered final! If it is what you think it is, it would be well worth the cost! My second question is why you have posted no photo of the coin except for the obverse, which looks like any other 1971-D Kennedy half dollar. The first thing I'd notice that would make me suspect that the coin was on a silver clad 1965-70 planchet would be that the edge isn't the mostly mint red or brown color of a pure copper core but is rather the slightly darkened silvery color of a 20% silver core as found on these silver clad pieces. May we see a photo of the edge?

This doesn't match the "D" mint mark punch from this era, which was much smaller and thinner. The coin was struck in Philadelphia. It's not possible to determine what it is from your blurry photos. (It's possibly a foreign object that was stuck to the coin or is just inside the holder.)

@Modwriter--Bear in mind that gold dollars, when unworn, contain only 0.04837 troy oz. of gold, worth only about $80 at $1,650 per oz. I'm not sure what you mean by "low grade". Worn but unimpaired common date gold dollars generally trade at a substantial premium over gold values. (Current Coin World values for common Types 1 and 3 range from $350 in VF20 to $450 in AU 58. (Remember that I said "most series", by which I was referring primarily to Liberty $5 through $20 and St. Gaudens $20.) Gold dollars that you could buy for near gold value would likely be "ex-jewelry", which are severely damaged and/or heavily polished. These are generally shunned by even casual collectors. Higher denominations of the classic series or modern bullion coins are better for acquiring gold. The ANACS certification, however, is a positive aspect, as gold dollars are often counterfeit.

The illustrations are presumably "stock photos" of a genuine coin. I doubt that's what you would get! What is "fellomoi.com"?

I've also had to settle for "problem coins" when unimpaired examples were beyond my budget. Here are photos of my 1857 Flying Eagle cent, which is uncirculated but has some "graffiti" in the form of a plus sign or cross lightly scratched on the reverse. It does show the original color, a light tan with reddish and gold hues. I suppose that to people in the 1850s and 60s these cents looked "white" in comparison to the pure copper large cents that they replaced.

It depends whether you are buying them to collect them or to acquire gold bullion. Common date gold coins in circulated and lower mint state grades (for most series) usually don't trade for much over bullion value anyway, and there couldn't be much of a discount for one that is damaged or otherwise seriously impaired. If you're a collector, you should buy the best coins you can afford and avoid problem examples of coins that you could affordably buy unimpaired. If you're just interested in acquiring gold, whatever discount you could get for an impaired--but still full weight--coin might make it worth your while, and certification by a reputable grading service would provide some assurance that the coin is genuine. As a collector of older U.S. coins, many (for copper coins, probably most) of which have some level of impairment (scratches, "cleaning", environmental damage, etc.), I have purchased a number of such coins, both certified and uncertified, with some level of impairment, but which I thought were still interesting and well worth what I paid for them. it depends upon the severity of the impairment--some coins described as "cleaned" are actually rather attractive--and how much lower the price is than it would be for an unimpaired specimen. (I'm grateful to those who say to "never" buy such pieces, as this makes them more affordable for me!)