Things That Make You Cringe

Can you say "key date pocket coin?"

I feel sad looking at that coin. But seeing the lines on it, it looks like someone cleaned it pretty carefully. The lines are all in one direction.

Ugh... I think it was 'toned' by a belt sander with 80 grit paper.

i agree its nothing but melt value - wow never thought I would say that for a key date its blasphemy!!

If you're looking at this strictly as a collector of high quality Peace dollars, turn away from what I'm about to write - RIGHT NOW! If you're looking at this from the perspective of trying to improve the coin and perhaps even profit by it, read on.

The last time I checked, a 1928 in VG or F still had a bid price of well over $300 in the Grey Sheet, so, if you could buy this at melt or maybe even as much as 2x or 3x melt, here's what you could do:

Toss it into Time Machine, otherwise known as a rock or jewelry tumbler. Add about 100 small cull coins (for some reason I'm thinkin' dateless Buffalo nickels - and the dirtier, the better) and turn the thing on. Check progress regularly to gauge how how quickly time is passing and "circulation" is happening to the 1928, after all, the object is not to turn it into dust!

When it gets to roughly the VF stage of circulation, add water. The water will slow the "circulation" process and any further marks imparted from rubbing against the culls will be finer and cover over the more coarse marks from the initial DRY tumbling.

When it gets to F or VG, I'd bet those scratches would be gone. Unfortunately, it would also be sort of shiny and look like it was cleaned.

Still...a cleaned F or VG 1928? Gotta be an improvement over this, no?

How would you like that to be your claim to fame?

"What do you do for a living?"
"Me? Oh I ruin extremely valuable collectable coins... But I'm one of the best in the world..."

Scratches or not, it is still a key date and is worth more than melt. In AG this coin is valued at 250. So given what it would have graded, asking less than AG price is fair.

If it were to go for 100, I would likely buy it and try to buff out the worse of the scratches. I can almost guarantee I can improve that coin and have a key date coin I would not have otherwise.

It looks to me like it was cleaned with a pencil eraser. I did once when I was a kid and the result looked a lot like that.

And I have to point this out as this drives me nuts. Its is NOT COULD OF. Could of is WRONG. The word is could've, which is a contraction of could have. Same goes for would of or should of. THIS makes me cringe.