1858 10 Cent, An Interesting Coin

I'm at AU58 or MS 63, can't quite make out if that is rub or lighting on the braid. It might have some kind of light cleaning/scratches at RHS/bottom of 2nd picture or that could just be caused by the scratches.

A nice example of the coin either way. hope you enjoy it!

Beautiful coin!

I see the difficulty here. The top knot suggests UNC, while the eyebrow, cheek, hair curl in front of the ear and braid suggest AU. The strike is soft in the central devices, but strong peripherally. There is plenty of luster for any AU/lower UNC grade. The toning makes it difficult to determine disruption in the fields around the portrait. The scratch on the neck is a concern, and suggests a staple scratch.

With that in mind, I could see an ICCS net grade of AU-50 (possibly AU-55 now) or a PCGS or NGC grade of AU-58. Very nice coin!

MS64

That is a thing of beauty. MS but I would argue that the eye appeal is 90% of the story here.

There is no wear on this coin, (reverse shows this best), so it has to be some sort of MS grade, but there is some old light rubbing on the high points, that disturbed the patina in those areas.
Enough light scratches to keep it at
MS-63.

I can understand why some opinions are at AU-58.

Eye appeal is in the eyes of those to whom it appeals, except to say that it won't look like this in 50 years' time.

Toning on coins is caused by the formation of a thin layer of corrosion - in the case of silver coins, the corrosion product is silver sulfide. By the laws of thin-film optics, the colour change follows the rainbow: red is thinnest, then orange, yellow, green and blue. After blue comes black, as the "thin layer" becomes too think to be transparent to light.

So for a coin like this that exhibits all of these colours, if left exposed to the atmosphere, the patterns will shift. The "black bits" will spread, as the bluish-green parts next to the black get thicker. The orange and red parts will turn bluer. And the currently untoned parts will turn red and orange. This is all assuming the toning is uniform; if the coin has some kind of surface adherent, or was cleaned long ago creating areas of "activation" that tone faster, or if the storage medium has "holes" that focus the pollutants on certain areas of the coin, then all bets are off as to which bits of the coin will tone when.

Protecting from the elements - particularly the element sulfur - will slow down the toning process. Keeping sulfur away is hard, but as a general rule, if you've managed to keep water out, then you've kept the sulfur out as well, as all sulfur-containing molecules are smaller than water molecules. But simply filling your coin storage with dessicant isn't necessarily going to prevent toning, as dessicant doesn't absorb sulfur.

Sap has said it much better, and with more detail, than I was able to do.
Toning is a one way progressive process. All that a coin collector can do, is to slow it down.
The best way to do this is, to house each coin in it's own air tight container.

I think since I am not in love with it, It will not "age" in my kitchen, but it might be sold sometime down the road.
Thank you, guys. very educating info.