Trade == Good?

Cleaned, holed, damaged..... if you like the coin then yes, but in my honest opinion I would've kept my dimes.

I'm a sucker for large copper. I'm probably going to give this to my history teacher at the end of the year. It totally has been through a lot!

I agree, this would have been in the dollar bin at my LCS.

edit: Yea, don't be down. You asked for opinions, and I just gave mine. I've done stuff like that plenty of times..learning all the way. Tango on!

Pft. Don't be down 0xDA71D. You like it .. I actually like it too. Sure it's beat up, but what a life it's had!

Value is after all subjective. Dimes to me are .. well, not a dime a dozen, but you get the idea! Value isn't just silver content vs copper or whatever. Sentiment can have value too.

Coins that have been holed must have meant something to someone once. They thought enough to pierce your cent to keep it as a souvenir- and keep it for some time by the looks of it.

So I think it's cool and I hope your teacher will treasure it. I know I would if someone gave such a memento to me!

A coin like this would look really nice on your key chain.

As for the economics of the trade, so what, and that is coming from someone who is always analyzing things that way.

Two circulated common Mercury dimes, certainly no more than $3 total. Probably stretching it a hair honestly.

Say the cull Large Cent is a bargain bin $1 coin.

You are out $2 bucks max at this point in time.

That is now, going forward I doubt the cull copper goes up much more than the Federal Deserve Note it is currently worth. The greenback will lose at least 2% compounded annually as well.

Silver may go up, it may go down.

At an all time high, silver is roughly triple what it is now so maybe those are $4 dimes each. Your loss would be $7 then, big deal.

Say silver goes down to an all time low for your lifetime, perhaps $5 or so. Then those dimes are only worth maybe $0.45 each and you are still down but only 10 cents.

So for the history of time as you have experienced it, this trade doesn't work financially.

You gave essentially $3 in value and that is a bad price point for cull large cents (later ones anyway). You won't get anything without a hole, bent, scratched, etc at that price point. A fair trade would have been one silver dime at most, even a bent one. For about 3 - 5 dimes you can get a Large Cent without a hole, without being bent, and without X marking the spot. Still a rough looking Large Cent, but problem free for the most part.

Like mentioned earlier though, there is value beyond financial. For me, this goes on my key chain and becomes a prop for conversation as needed.

SsDd: I love the way you looked at it from the coin's perspective