Reengraving Question.

Yeah, I got a IHC from an online dealer that had a re-engraved ribbon. They took it back no prob.

It is a far more commonly encountered problem with ancient coins, where the process is known as "tooling". A tooled coin is considered only slightly less deceptive than a counterfeit coin.

Take a good closeup of the coin. Use "Reply to Topic" and then click on "Free Image Optimizer". Upload your image there, then I usually use Crop Image to draw a box around just the coin, then Apply Changes. If the resulting size in KB (shown in green below the image) is a lot less than the 100KB maximum, I usually adjust "new size" and "image quality" to make the best of it. Then "download this image", which adds "_opt" to the filename, then use that image with the "upload image" option in the original "Reply to Topic".

The Reply to Topic also has a helpful "Uploading Images" link, and the image optimizer has basic instructions at the top. Make sure your picture has good focus or none of this helps. If your camera has high resolution but not very good "macro" images, I've found that a clear picture taken from a bit farther away still shows good detail after being resized and cropped in the optimizer.

here is a picture of the re-engraved 1865 Indian cent I bought off e-bay and anacs brought yo light it is re-engraved. sorry this is the best picture I could do hope this is ok also its my first ever picture on any forum.its with a cell phone.

Good picture for a first time! Let's see another showing the full obverse. I'd never heard of re-engraving the ribbon. If the coin is already AU, what value does this deception add? Also seems pretty hard to detect...

Another area to watch is on coins such as seated Liberty or Barber coins where the LIBERTY has been re-engraved. Not so much a problem on high end coins, but on lower end keys touching up the I or maybe a couple more letters to move a VG coin to a F or a F to VF can be profitable.

It's been said here more than once in the thread: Diamonds are the go-to point for grading IHC's. Full diamonds will cause a grader to consider strike instead of wear, and probably overgrade the coin to the tune of unwarranted value. Same with LIBERTY in Barber issues.

If you upload your original image into the optimizer, change the width back to the original value, then crop it down to just the coin, it would come out something like this. Probably yours would show more detail than my copy.



Edit: I see from the NGC price guide that if re-engraving could convince a grader to go MS63 instead of AU55 on this coin, it could be worth about $100 more. Too bad; the other details look pretty nice on this coin.