Hello Coin Community,
I need help in identifying if the coin I won in an online auction is the same coin the seller sent me.
The coin I received does not look to me to be the same coin from the auction pictures. I am reaching out to you to give me your opinion since many of you have more experience with coins.
About 5-10% of all coins I won in online auctions ended up being not the same coins from its auction pictures. Sellers would post pictures of a better grade coin, write in the description that pictures are of the coin that will be sent, then they send a different, lower grade coin.
Some coins I receive are easy to identify not being the coins from the auction pictures, for example, they do not have the same mint mark, seller states the auction is for a 1941 D
Mercury dime and posts pictures of a 1941 D
Mercury dime, then sends a 1941
Mercury dime with
no mint marks. Some coins are not that easy to identify.
The coin here in question is a 1936
Buffalo nickel. First 2 pictures are from the auction page posted by the seller:
Since coins can look different when seen in pictures and in person, I took several pictures (in daylight with camera flash on, without flash and in the dark with camera flash on) to see if any of the pictures will match details of the coin in the auction pictures. I was still not able to identify that it is one and the same coin. I send the pictures I took:
In the auction pictures, the horn can be seen almost in its entirety.
I can't see it on the coin I received, the horn is worn out, I tried taking pictures using camera under different angles and brightness of light, I can't see the contours of horn's tip.
I looked for scratches on the coin I received and on the coin in the auction pictures to match them, I can not find matching ones. Letters on the coin in the auction pictures are sharp, on the coin I received the letter 'a' (last letter in the word 'America') is worn out at the top and blends into its background, letter 's' (last letter in the word 'cents') at its bottom is flattened and touches the coin's edge, there is no small gap of separation to make it look sharp like in the auction pictures. On the coin I receive a dark line goes vertically from Buffalo's front leg up to its shoulder, I can not see any resembling darker nuances in the auction picture. I marked with white circles some of the issue in the picture below:
Do you think the coin from the auction pictures is the coin I received?
Thank you for your help.
Posted 02/25/2015 3:31 pm
to CCF. Even the nicks and scratches don't match,the coins are different.
