I Bought 100 Indian Head Cents And Now I Have Some Questions

You will probably get lots of info from the experienced collectors on this site. The green on your copper Indians is corrosion. It is not a good thing and is hard to remedy. If the green verdigris is removed, than the coins surface may be pitted as corrosion causes a loss of metal. The only thing I would suggest doing is to get some pure acetone from a hardware store and soak the coins. Search on acetone on the site and you will get a wealth of info on how to use acetone safely (it has toxic fumes and is highly flammable). It will only remove contaminants that are organic and of course it won't fix corrosion, but it may improve a few coins and won't harm any others. Any further cleaning will just remove any value that the coins have remaining and I would highly advise not to try anything, but acetone. While many of these Indians may have decent features and minimal wear, the 50 that were described as culls may be because of damage from improper cleaning or an attempt to remove environmental damage. All of the coins you pictured in your post appear to me to have been improperly cleaned. Nevertheless, $75 is not a huge sum and you got some enjoyment and a start on completing the later dates. Hang around here a while and you will learn how to better evaluate coins and you can start to upgrade your set. Best of luck!

Kurt - Here are the pics for the years you asked about, but they are probably not worth much even if they have the variety, because they are among some of the worst coins in the whole lot.

I think you got a good deal at 100 IHC for $74. Culls are selling for 50-75 cents each on ebay all the time, so even culls are starting to get pricy. Most 100 or more IHC lots are routinely selling for $1 each and have a mixture of culls, G, VG and occasionally a few better grades. For the second coin, I'd take the ugly dark brown with full liberty over a corroded/cleaned coin.



Personally, a small amount of green doesn't detract for me if other features are nice, like full liberty, nice detail in feathers, etc. This is only my opinion.

All the extras can be dumped back on ebay and you probably will be close to $1 each for them as an "average circulated mixture"

mycrob - Is the second one corroded? I thought that one was just worn (and I'll trust all of you experts that it was also cleaned). I didn't notice any corrosion on that one though. It's absolutely beautiful to look at in person.

Very useful info. Thanks KurtS

I think you got a great deal,
its going to be fun going through
the Indians and building a collection
with your kids.
I had a great time doing the same thing 20 years ago with mine.

I think second coin is harshly cleaned, but don't see any corrosion.

In addition to price paid, I always factor in the joy of the search- you can't put a price tag on that, but several hours of enjoyment are worth something. So again, $74 of 100 IHC is a good deal. I bet you keep 30 or so and wind up selling the 70 coins four about $70 on ebay. Lose some dollars for fees, but in the end, you wind up having a nice starter IHC set for maybe $15 net. That's pretty darn good.

The 1897 in your first group has very nice details, even with the rim ding problems. In going through 1000s of IHCs, it is hard to find coins with full "Liberty" anymore, so I think the 1897 is still a keeper.