1858 Flying Eagle Small Letters

Ms-63 (details if it is cleaned). I see no wear and nothing that definitely says cleaned to me. The color could just be the exposure of the picture. Beautiful coin! Wish I had it.

Nice coin! Without having it in hand there's no way of knowing if it has luster, if it's been cleaned, etc. because we don't know about the photography. It appears to be a very nice specimen in mint condition. Congratulations!

Here are the last two pictures I have. I'm not sure if they help much since they dont seem to be zoomed much more than the first ones.

Image: 1858 FE SL front2.jpg
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Image: 1858 FE SL back2.jpg
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What does the word slabbed mean? Professionally graded and in a holder? How can I determine for sure if this were cleaned? I only have the Internet and a couple of books as resources right now.

I'd think it would get out of the AU range and into the MS 60 to 62. Nice Eagle

I got it for about $230 on ebay. To me the all of the seller's pictures make his coins look odd: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZdgmk50

I'm hoping that once I see the coin in person it will look much different than the pictures and not cleaned. But if we assume it was cleaned, did I pay too much for it?

I e-mailed the seller and he has a 7day money back satisfaction guarantee! The coin was shipped on Tuesday from NJ, so I could possibly have it by the end of the week.

I should have posted the item description originally, but here is what the E Bay posting stated:

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1858 small letters Flying Eagle cent, Breen # 1933, reverse with wide open E's, listed as very rare. Reverse is rotated 30 degrees counterclockwise. High grade with some very minor hairlines in the obverse field which may be die polish. This is a beautiful cent and an interesting variety.

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I found a coin on Snow's website which tells me that sometimes hairlines can be neither die polish nor bad cleaning, but just contact marks:

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How many chances to you get to buy an S-3, properly graded in a PCGS holder with the correct format attribution? Here is a real beauty with just a trace of wear and wonderful eye appeal. There are a few light hairlines here and there, but no real contact marks of any kind. The coin has the typical weakness on the breast feathers that the early die state S3 die pairs normally have. It looks like wear, but I think this coin shows very little actual wear. This would make a great addition to a MS registry collection because it is labeled under the MS designation. Also with PCGS now designating S-numbers on the holder, the desirability of this coin cannot be understated.

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http://www.indiancent.com/market/56s3c58p.jpg


Now that I have confirmed the hairlines are definitely there on my coin, once I can examine it I should be able to tell whether the marks are die polish or contact marks. They are probably contact marks, so how can I determine whether they are from a bad cleaning job or wear marks?

The more I think about this coin, the more I want to get it professionally graded!

I made an attempt at scanning the coin through the holder. The level of detail in the pictures isn't that great compared to how beautiful the actual coin is. I tried to adjust the brightness, gamma, and exposure in these pictures to show the color of the coin when a light is shining on it. I definitely has a brilliance to it, and the level of detail is really nice.

However, after using various angles to reflect the light I can definitely see hairlines. They are VERY hard to see with my 10x magnifier since the angle of light has to be perfect to bring them out. Unfortunately, once I got the hang of it there are much more of them than what the pictures originally indicated. Not only are they between the date and the bottom of the eagle, but there are some less pronounced ones on the top of the eagle. On the back of the coin there are some very faint hairlines in some areas, but they are there.

To me it looks like the coin has been cleaned, but I did notice something. The coin arrived in a traditional cardboard / plastic holder that is stapled together. There is handwriting on the outside front of the holder, but the right staple is missing. If the coin were to be slid in and out of the holder horizontally on the right, the angle of the hairlines perfectly matches if someone were to align up the coin with the handwriting. Could the plastic be abrasive enough to cause hairlines on a coin if it were slid in and out several times?

However, I have decided that I will keep the coin and I am going to send this coin off to ANACS to be graded! I will post a follow-up once I get my coin back!!

Also, the back has a -30deg rotation on this coin. I compared it to my other eagles to be sure I wasn't seeing things.

Image: 1858front.jpg
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Image: 1858back.jpg
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Image: holder.jpg
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I have changed my mind about getting this FE graded. Something that I've always wanted to do in collecting is purchase a good example of each US coin type, and after learning what a "7070" is I purchased an album today!

I have a new direction and goal with collecting, and if I ever need to sell this FE I'll have it graded at that time.

My final thoughts on this coins grade is MS62 if it hasn't been cleaned, but if it has been cleaned then I feel ANACS would give it the highest "MS60 details" grade.

Thanks for all the responses!