1858 Liberty Seated Quarter For Grading - New Pictures Added 12/30/17!

This coin looks to a have a tooled and scratched obverse to me. Some areas like the two shields look sharp but other details like liberty's dress drapery look worn smooth. The clasp, breast and thigh look polished down with a dremel. The details in the shield do not look the same as details in other areas of the coin. U-shaped scratch and pitting between neck and breast of liberty. The reverse looks more original and the disparity in the grade from obverse to reverse is striking. Some scratches in the right obverse field in shape of large triangle. May have been retoned after tooling.

Under $10, and we'll see how it looks in-hand after acetone. I've seen plenty of tooled early copper and DB silver, and this coin does not look tooled to me, just beat up from circulation, and with some scratches. There are lots of contact marks on the chest, but I don't see anything that looks like whizzing or tooling.

Worst case scenario, it goes back into the junk silver trade box for trading/flipping.

I'm working a deal with my LCS right now on a nicely toned 1809 CBH (PCGS/CAC) if he can hold it till after Dec. That one can go in the boxes with all of the other pretty coins in their pretty plastic holders. It's about as risk-free as a coin purchase can be. A stand-up opposite-field double that scores a couple of baserunners. But it's the difference between looking at a Picasso painting in a museum and finding a Picasso in your neighbor's yard sale for 10 bucks because he thinks it's a cheap reprint. Art lovers might get pleasure from both, but I would argue the latter is certainly much more thrilling than the former, albeit much more unlikely. But we're not dealing with priceless artwork, we're dealing with old silver coins under $10. The potential reward is much smaller, but so is the potential risk. It will always be worth melt.

If I never gambled or played hunches and only bought those sort of A-list top tier PCGS/NGC/CAC coins, I'd have a very, very nice collection. It would be necessarily smaller. I'd also be very broke, and very bored. Sometimes you strike out swinging, sometimes you knock it over the fence, sometimes it's a solid base hit, but why play the game if you're just going to stand there in the batters' box and never swing at anything unless it's dead-center in your strike zone?

VF-25 details (old obverse cleaning).

VF-25.

Those irregular blackened areas around the stars did not happen naturally.

What it really looks like:

Looks better.

I gave it about a 10 minute acetone soak and let it air-dry but it didn't change much, still kinda darker and crustier towards the periphery, but for less than 10 bucks it's about as nice as I'm going to get.