RCBEGA

I found this "Walker" years ago in a miscellaneous purchase. The obverse is very flat but the reverse is sharp and far too detailed! This coin is a Chinese counterfeit made out of base metals which upon first glance looks silver. Most likely made with laser engraved dies. NGC did a fantastic write up here: https://www.ngccoin.com/news/article/8090/counterfeit-detection-february-2020-walking-liberty-half-dollars/

Absolutely. I wasn't planning on trying to flip it for a profit or anything. For me it's a great memory with my daughter, the budding young collector.

You may remember back in March I posted about a 21-D merc my daughter and I cherry picked out of a dealers junk silver bin. More than a few believed it was not a genuine coin. NGC finished with it today and it is indeed genuine, however they decided it showed evidence of cleaning. While I'm disappointed it didn't get a straight grade it's hard to really complain when I paid $2.50 for it...

I thank you for the very kind words. I can understand suspicion, as I stated I took the photo with a poor quality camera in bad light (I've since upgraded) to make matters more interesting I found another 21-D in the same bucket of "junk silver" a few days later. (Picture attached) I also never mentioned my credentials, as a younger man I was a professional numismatist. In fact I was the youngest ever hired by Heritage auctions. Now, could the coin in question be fake? Of course. But I do not believe it to be. We shall find out soon enough.

It is indeed! I should have known I wouldn't stay anonymous for long! (Not that I tried very hard)

I'm fairly confident on the authenticity, the photo was taken on my potato of a camera. In his coffee can of "junk mercury dimes" we pulled out a 16-S barber dime, and a few better date mercs like a 17-S. Not sure if he had a collection dump and hadn't sorted or what.

About ten years ago I made the difficult decision to leave the hobby, I was just not in a place in my life to collect anymore. About a month ago my soon to be 9 year old daughter found some of my leftover coins and became interested. I decided to dip my toe back into the hobby and help her assemble a whitman book of Mercury dimes (the set I started with as a kid). Today we hit the local coin shops in hunt of some circulated book fillers. While looking through junk silver I ran across this. That's right friends, for the low price of $2.20 my daughter and I are now the proud owners of a 21-D Merc.....needless to say she is on the way to NGC as I type this. It feels really good to be back in the hobby!