1853 Arrows Dime

Yeah, the 1921 dollar did have an unnatural look to it though even from far back. Looked kind of 'whizzed' but many buyers would just assume it was fine. The grainyness seems also to be a way to bump up the luster, I wouldnt be surprised if it was used by sellers like GSC, whom I am also pretty suspicious of. I'm gonna steer clear of the Half Dime for a type set coin and go for something more reliable. If it was an auction and I could win it for $50 or something, I'd be willing to risk a shot at it. Seated coins are amongst my favorites, so I want to make sure I have really nice ones in my type set.

I find though that a lot of buyers recognize that this seller (fairtraderz) is notorious for pushing cleaned stuff, so they bid really low, and if youre careful you can cherry pick some of the nicer ones off him at a discount in the auctions. This is particularly true for the clearly cleaned stuff; got an AU-58 cleaned 1873 quarter off him for $75 once, and the cleaning wasnt nearly as bad in hand.

His BIN's are ridiculous a lot of the time though, so I usually steer clear of them. One time I bought an 1845-O dime off him, knew it was cleaned, but not polished. I think it was an auction....And I really did want to believe it wasn't polished, but it certainly was and there was no denying it. I returned it and he just relisted it without mentioning the polishing at all. Its not just this coin either, I've seen him do it over and over. I bet they'd just try to claim that they don't have enough time to list everything correctly, but I don't really buy that.

I actually have seen some fairly reasonable prices from this seller. He had a whole bunch of PCGS G-6 graded 1921-d walkers at one point for $300 a piece BIN a few months ago, which at the time was the lowest BIN I'd seen. I considered it, but he lives in California so I'd therefore be taxed.

I picked up this one instead:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...TRK:MEWNX:IT

It was sold on teletrade for $90. The seller struck me as....ridiculous. He copy pasted the teletrade description in broken english, LOL.

Nonetheless, I offered him a little more than $90, he initially turned down my offer of $90 even. Probably accepted because he was having trouble selling it. Was surprised when he accepted. Anyway, we will see how it looks in hand! $110 shipped may not be a great price for this coin, but it looks pretty nice to me.

Edit: NVM, the $90 was without the buyers fee and shipping. So he just broke even.

Dave - this is interesting! It had never occurred to me that sellers might doctor their photography *that* much. I figured the basics - brightness and contrast - but never imagined sharpening or anything like that. Last week when I was looking at a "no date", I grossly enlarged a section and ran some filters over it, played with curves and levels to determine the date. I'll be sharpening might've saved me some time! It also seems to bring out more of the coin's flaws, so I might use this as a sort of inspection as I review my own or other people's photographs in the future. Thank you!!