7070 Expensive Upgrade (This Is Getting Serious!)

Thanks for your replies, and hope you had a nice Thanksgiving! So I'm still not sure if I got a reasonable deal @ $700 and more to the point if I should go through with the deal or not. Perhaps if I sent the coin to NCS they would be able to work a "miracle" on it. I would think using a solvent/acetone would further damage the coin/ it's value although I've never tried it. To me (and the other high bidders) the coin looked like an attractive example of this often badly beat up 17xx date. Interestingly, the 1797 is a somewhat challenging date (given 6/10 on the PCGS registry scale) and has an overall mintage of 900K compared to 1.85mil for the 1798.

I really can't think of anything that would cause a copper coin to urn that color naturally. The reason I say this again is because you are asking for opinions on if anyone thinks it could be natural and my answer is No I don't think it is. I wouldn't just not pay for the item though if I had placed a bid and won it though. I may contact the seller and tell him that I was uneducated when I bid on the item and have found out after the fact that the coin has problems and tell them that if it does in fact have those problems in hand that I will probably be sending it back for a refund and see if they decide to just cancel the deal. If they say well you bought it you have to pay I would do so and then do what I said if I was unhappy with the coin. It will cost you shipping back to him but just because you made a mistake doesn't give you the option of just not paying the seller who had nothing to do with that mistake. Some sellers may say they will cancel it but then you may also have some that refuse to do so.

everyone does their set differently, me myself I bought a lot of slabbed coins and cracked them all out to place them into the album but since I didn't have any plans to ever sell the coins nor upgrade any of them there wasn't a problem with what they would sell for. If you look at my album you will see all the labels taped to the back cover as I did save all of them for that purpose but had no qualms with cracking a high dollar coin out for the album. One of the Large Cents I cracked out was a $3000+ coin and it wasn't even the most expensive coin that I cracked out for the album so there is no right or wrong way to do the album, but if all the coins are slabbed and left slabbed you can't really call it a 7070 album, its a 7070 set and I was completing the album as coins4fun is doing

Well, I am still sort of undecided but I did pay for the coin, going ahead with the sale and going by the tracking information it may well be arriving today. If I remove it from the holder, I may void the return privilege; although in my experience sellers are lax about this.

From the pictures provided, you seem to be 100% certain that the coin's toning is not natural and furthermore that the color is definitely questionable. The idea that someone painted the coin and glued it to a school project in the 1800s seems like a wild guess but the consensus is that this coin definitely isn't natural. I would like to see it in person. I can also bring it to Stacks where they can give me their opinion. If it is in fact paint, I am not a professional and would not know how to remove it without damaging the coin's relatively delicate surfaces.

I hope that I did not get ripped off on this sale. This particular issue, in fact a lot of 18th century coins seem to have some sort of issue (I read that coins in general at this time were circulated and numismatists were very few and far between.) Going by auction records and retail price guides, I am still unsure if I overpaid @ nearly $700. At a local coin show I went to this weekend, I saw a dealer with 2 1797's (one was a dark raw coin in VF with a price tag over $3000.)

If I didn't get such a great deal, and I later come to this conclusion that I overpaid by a few hundred dollars, I may try to return the coin to the seller (who has done thousands of high volume transactions with 100% feedback.) I am happy that the basic set is now complete - spanning 4 centuries, with all the relevant mints represented, with 1 inexpensive strong candidate for an upgrade. I am now working on the gold page, and have 8/10 expensive coins to go. That will be a great challenge for me to complete financially with Gold at $1700+ per ounce!

I won an 1846O Liberty Quarter Eagle (~175 known) yesterday and again am thinking that I may have made the same mistake and overpaid @ $775 (I made a post about it with not many responses.) It just seemed like a good value being a US-issued Gold coin, almost as rare as a 1794 Dollar for under $1000. Of course, there is probably no demand for it and I am leaning toward returning it and buying a beautiful common Indian $10 instead.

What did you decide to do with this coin? In my experienced opinion, a coin such as this for type is a poor purchase at $700.

Please understand that my comment about the $700 price had little to do with finding another coin cheaper and more to do with having the money tied up in what most would consider a problem coin. Most folks build these sets with the idea that the coins will never be sold, traded or upgraded, but the reality is that the great majority of these sets are sold, traded or upgraded at some point in the future. When that time comes, the problem-free coins typically fetch the most money and are the most in demand while the coins with issues (such as this coin) languish or only sell at a steep discount.

Therefore, I doubt highly that I could find a problem-free, attractive VF-EF large cent from the 1700s for less than $700. If the VF-EF details, a 1700s date and approximately $700 are absolute requirements then you have set certain parameters that will dictate the coin. If one or more of these parameters is flexible however, you can buy a nice piece that might make you more happy in the future.

If the person posting as Tom_B is who I think it is, he is a well respected dealer and has a lot of knowledge, listen to what he says,