1857 Large Cent .... Not Ugly, But Good Or Bad?

The strike appears quite evenly flat to me; particularly so, the stars. I thought it to be unusual, considering the higher grade and having owned some of these that were better struck-up. Thought I'd see what the coppers "die" guys have to say about this one.

I suppose it could be recolored but a nice large cent overall

I was hoping you'd chime in on this one, Conder. While my "bad feeling" started this thread, your study in this area, Conder, enables you to better articulate the diagnostic clues. This item does appear to be the offering of a reliable seller.

Got my Grellman now and it is definitely NOT real. Date position is completely wrong. I'll just give one diagnostic. The point of the curl over the 8 should be slightly right of the center of the 8, not centered between the inner and outer curves of the right side of the 8.

Someone is about to lose $180 on it.

And at the last moment tries to defend his loss as a sniper causes his bid to jump another $30, where he wins because the sniper takes it with a loss of his own of $211 dollars.

I'd call this a very deceptive counterfeit. With the well-formed date digits and lack of obvious defects like incomplete letters or shallow details it would likely have fooled me. I have an 1857 large date in MS-64 and this coin does not jump out as suspicious at first glance.

My large cent has fairly weak details on some of the stars and I consider that a very common feature for braided hair cents. Examples with fully-struck stars are hard to find in my experience.

One additional odd feature on the suspect coin is the "fin" of metal that appears to stick out from the edge from about 7:00 to 12:00 on the obverse. Large cents usually have very "chunky" edges that are uniformly smooth. Perhaps this is the remnant of a casting seam? Seems odd that they wouldn't have "fixed" this on what otherwise seems like a very well-made counterfeit.

Thanks for the expert diagnosis Condor101!

A fin like that can often appear on a genuine US coin, especially if the dies are slightly misaligned. On the other hand it is also a characteristic of the counterfeits made by the Chinese counterfeiter that Coin World talks to all of the time. A great many of his fakes show such finning. It isn't a casting seam, it is the result of too high a pressure in the striking or a slightly oversized clearance between the collar and the neck of the die.