A Couple Of New Double Eagles

Both are in NGC and PCGS 64 holders, respectively. The first one has no more marks on it than any other 64 I've seen or owned. It might be the lighting of the photo exaggerating something I don't see in hand. I might have experiment with different lighting.

I traded an 1861 and 1868 PF64 Half Dimes plus an 1865 3CS PF64.

I for one have difficult time taking pictures of coin in slabs.
I agree that the 15-S is hard to grade from the lighting on the pictures.

It must have been your lighting.

I must humbly admit photographic failure. And, here I am trying to show off my coin photo skills. Okay, lesson learned. I was so excited to get the photos done and get the luster/color to show that I missed showing the obvious surface detail. I'll probably redo the 15-S sometime later. In hand the luster and color on that coin are killer. I don't see any obvious nicks on Liberty (but other eagle eyes out there might see something I missed). There's some scratchiness on the sun on the reverse, but the reverse has a lesser impact on the grade anyways.

I just noticed in my own photo above what looks like a nick in the knee area...I missed seeing that when having the coin in hand...but it's still good for the grade. And there appears to be some minor scratchiness in the fields. I think even MS65s have that stuff going on.

These are very nice. Like USC, these are also my favorite design and I would love to own one!

I believe these pictures light up the coins a bit better. In hand the 1915-S (NGC MS64) has killer eye appeal with great luster and deep orangy-gold color. The 1926 (PCGS MS64) has the average luster you'd expect on a Saint and I think is very decent for the grade.

Wow! Those new pictures are great. While I'll admit to enjoying the first time I saw the new $100 bill last month, I can only imagine how great it would have been 100 years ago to go to the bank to pick up the newly minted and issued gold coinage of the day. It's a shame that the govt decided that the need for inflation outweighed the sound money of the day.

One of my first jobs after college was to search property records in a historic town. It was really interesting to see how stable the house prices were until the country went off the gold standard and mortgages became the standard. I would see old historic mansions selling for $20k in 1820, then $20k in 1840, then $20k in 1880, then $20k in 1915, then $60k in 1970, then 800k in 1990, then $5M in 2007. Seems we have lost our way.

Thanks Brian. I went nuts trying over and over again to try getting better pictures with different lighting.