1879 Shield Nickel

Au55 looks cleaned

Still trying to learn . . .

What are the clues that it could be cleaned?

In the absence of better evidence I don't really see any evidence of cleaning. Photography pressents coins in an entirely different light than you see them in-hand, literally - you don't usually look at a coin under the same lighting you shoot it under. So interpreting images of coins is a completely separate skillset from evaluating them sitting in front of you.

I'm ay AU55 for this one, I think, but given that it's nickel (partly) I'm ready to believe some strike weakness is involved.

AU-53

I don't think it has been cleaned either.

Definitely slabworthy IMO and the 2nd best date in the series. Does not look like a 9/8, much the pity.

I'm not a huge Shield fan but wow, jealousy gets me on this one. It looks mid AU, I think only the weak strike knocks it down from a -58, but that's endemic to the series, even on MS+ coins.

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

I had initially planned to keep this coin based on the significance of the year to my family (well 100 years after 1879). Then I ended up deciding to keep a lot of valuable gold coins, so I'm considering selling this one after all. It does have an old style ANACS photograde certificate from the 1980's with grade listed as AU 50/50, but it seems those certificates are usually far off by today's standards.

Phaedrus: "It does have an old style ANACS photograde certificate from the 1980's with grade listed as AU 50/50, but it seems those certificates are usually far off by today's standards."

Definitely don't regrade it, then, those "old style" ANACS certs are worth a large premium. I'd rather have a definitely low -50 early ANACS from the pre-slab/certificate only era, especially if it's a white card, than a proper -55 in a modern TPG slab. ANACS quit split-grades in Christmas '89 when the newfangled slabs rolled out.

White cards ended in '81 (i think), yours is a "blue card" (has the blue underprint lamp design on the paper). With the color picture it dates 1987-1989. I love collecting these as it's something that was really unique and different at the time in the pre-slab world, at least for those of us who can remember an era before every other coin was entombed in plastic. Random factoid: the grade used to be optional (!) you could send the coin in just for the photo and verification of authenticity!!