1888 IHC, Great Color

Rim bumps will keep this out of MS. AU58....maybe a MS62...just depends on the day.

I was looking at the rim dings, particularly on reverse. Other than that, I guess there's no wearing/rub. I'm new to grading, hence all the posts :)

These Indians sure are fun. Not that I don't like silver and gold... but there's something about Indians. Perhaps because I occasionally found them as a child. I'm also wowed by the value of some of them compared to face. It's pretty fun to tell someone that the coin is worth 10, 20, 30,000 times face value...

I have a bottom-of-the-line DSLR, Cannon Rebel XS with a macro lens.

I tried various lighting situations a few days ago, all on my dining room table (lots of indirect natural light): light tent with xenon or halogen lamps; natural daylight, overhead halogens, camera flash, and a dizzying array of combinations of lighting. Then I had to try the various stagings with different camera settings.

The coins were resting on a scrap of Ultrasuede on a clipboard so that I could tilt the clipboard ~30 degrees without displacing the coin. I don't have a tripod but it sure would be easier if I did.

Out of all these permutations, the pictures that look the best were taken with the camera's auto setting and natural daylight +/- flash (the camera decided which). Most of the time the flash would deploy and that was OK for the copper coins. The clipboard was tilted towards the natural daylight, at an angle so that my body didn't cast shadows. I was usually not quite perpendicular to the coin so there wasn't too much glare if the flash went off. My usual preferred shooting mode for macros of shiny metal things is aperture priority, but with the coins if I wasn't exactly perpendicular and centered part of the coin was slightly out of focus.

I shot a bunch of silver coins and a few gold coins and those shots don't look good. With no flash they were fuzzy and with flash there was too much glare and reflection. I rigged up a flash diffuser by holding a doubled-up thin white plastic grocery bag over the flash-- that was pretty good. I should probably set up the light tent for the silver and gold coins.

Looks MS to me I agree with MS63 BN. Lovely IHC