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Replies: 16 / Views: 3,155 |
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Pillar of the Community
Belgium
2078 Posts |
This professional vendor 5500 feedbacks is a daughter society of the Austrian National Mint He is superfast with cheap postage and handling costs However is skill of photografing some coins is atrocious Also he does not send original photofiles on request So try to grade this super de luxe top offer of Napoleon III nearly one ounce gold coin Condition as visible in picture  Me and my friend spend three days of emails between ourselves and we have a pretty good idea what the grade is http://cgi.benl.ebay.be/ws/eBayISAP...MEWA:IT&rd=1
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1203 Posts |
After enlarging it as much as I could, and taking into consideration the less than favorible photo quality, it comes down as a MS 62 to 64 in my book. I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7123 Posts |
Hi Ageka
Its very hard to tell from the pics,, But this coin looks like it was well preserved,,
My estimate is MS-65
Rick
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Pillar of the Community
 Belgium
2078 Posts |
Well you both would make good raw coin buyers because it is not known widely that most 100 FF crowned heads Napoleon III are uncirculated We decided that the full cartwheel lustre meant an MS coin Blowing it up only gave jpeg boogies I will wait till tomorrow to see wheather there are more graders willing to give an opinion 
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Pillar of the Community
 Belgium
2078 Posts |
Since there are no more volunteers here is our reasoning First the high points on this coin are the cheeck and no slide is visalble Second Sir Conan Doyle was right ; the best way to hide something is put it in the open The coin refused to go blue because the lamps used to make the photo were not correct But the coin was willing to go green showing presumebly a large bagmark on the neck This drops the coin to MS63 Image: 1867 A Kop b green annotated.jpg53.54 KB 
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Pillar of the Community
 Belgium
2078 Posts |
On the reverse side at 3 and 4 o'clock there seems to be friction This drops the coin down to MS62 Image: 1867 A Let b green ann 1.jpg70.11 KB 
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Pillar of the Community
 Belgium
2078 Posts |
However I would never bid on this coin without having it in hand because there is this strange artifact which may be a jpeg boogey ( but it was a 300 dpi photo) Look at the strange rectangular field in the first cipher 1 of the date If it were the last cipher I would say the die was retooled to last another year but I cannot figure out why the first lettre should be retooled Image: 1867 A Let b green ann 2.jpg69.56 KB 
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Pillar of the Community
 Belgium
2078 Posts |
So conclusion This is probably an MS62 and Old Dan did a miracle beign correct with such a lousy pic As a result of the lousy pic the coin went for only 22% over melt wheareas the correct price would have been 50% over melt But like I said I did not dare to bid 
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Pillar of the Community
United States
891 Posts |
[quote]Originally posted by ageka
The coin refused to go blue because the lamps used to make the photo were not correct But the coin was willing to go green showing presumebly a large bagmark on the neck This drops the coin to MS63
Hey ageka, could you enlighten me on what you are talking about with the blue and green. I have not a clue about gold coins except that I would like to have some.
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Pillar of the Community
 Belgium
2078 Posts |
quote: Originally posted by Southern Yankee
Hey ageka, could you enlighten me on what you are talking about with the blue and green. I have not a clue about gold coins except that I would like to have some.
One of the first things I had to do in professional life was to automate color matching Like Mercedes would send a piece of leather and ask us to make a plastic in the exact same color It was mostly done by hand and eye and took mostly mixing 5 to 7 colors and trying up to ten times before the colors would match Then came along spectrophotometers and some matematic formulas three competing types like Cielab which ran on a huge PDP11/23 computer and would give the right color with only 3-4 pigments in only 3-4 trials So I spend a week in Princeton New Jersey to learn color matching and another 8 months to get the computer learning and running Now I use an 8 year old photoscanner whose purpose in life was to turn colorphotos into digital photos and the program has a red a green and a blue balance ( I do not know what photoshop or any other program has ) If I move the blue balance to maximum setting I normally get a bluish coin showing all the strange things on gold ; like glue, fingerprints, scratches etc because yellow and blue contrast very well This coin however refused to contrast so I had to twiddle blue and green to get the best contrast in green It all comes back to the fact that our eyes only see contrast and then to augment the contrast in such a way we see the differences
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Pillar of the Community
 Belgium
2078 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
 Belgium
2078 Posts |
However the sovereign had been glued in a book as way of fixing the sovereing to the page god knows when This is very clearly seen by going all blue on the blue axis Notice the orange liquid surfaces which are glue ( and only took 30 minutes in acetone to dissappear forever ) Image: Vicky glued blue.jpg75.16 KB 
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Pillar of the Community
United States
891 Posts |
That is some great info. Thanks for answering. Is this something that will work on silver coins also? Or say any coins? Will have to do some reading on this. Maybe I can pick up a few tricks of the trade that I can use somewhere down the road. I use Paint shop pro and it has all the bells and whistles. Just never really messed with that stuff. Fantastic info thanks
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Pillar of the Community
 Belgium
2078 Posts |
The theory is that the human eye will only see a difference of 1 unit as measured by a spectrophotometer and calculated by Cielab That is not true because in oranje the human eye needs 4 units of difference ( that is why manipulating color on gold pays off ) On the other hand in gray the human eye may see difference as little as 0.1 unit I presume the method I discribed will work perfectly on copper , messing and anything yellow to oranje I presume that on silver the best would be to try lighter darker to the extreme and contrast up and down to the extreme to force gray differencies If the silver was badly photographed so that it looks yellow like the first step would be to make it look like silver My program as a function to show color in black and white
I edited because I typed Cieluv when I meant Cielab
Edited by ageka 08/17/2006 2:17 pm
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Pillar of the Community
 Belgium
2078 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
891 Posts |
I don't think tylenol will do it for that. Maybe more like darvocet. Thanks
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Replies: 16 / Views: 3,155 |