syzygy

My first one. Got in in change and it's not even March - not too bad.

Ohhh it's Greek with a head I have know clue, but here is a futzed-with version of your pic that shows something close to the features. Maybe this will help.

Got these two a couple of weeks ago...

Add my GWS too Andy

All three of these are circulation finds from the last two weeks. What other series can you pick up examples in change that are 52-70 years old?

Another snag from circulation last week - misaligned reverse die. Notice the slightly off center - but only the reverse. Definitely not a collar error but a misaligned die. Small enough to notice and large enough to keep - hey it's not much of an investment risk

Got this one in change the other day. It's a suprisingly strong strike. So many of the clad roosies seem to be weakly struck. Especially noticeable as the last digit of the date disappears into the rim. Not so with this one - wish I could have snagged it fresh out of a roll.

I have received a few of these in the last week or so from different places. It's actually a very nice design. I wonder if they will produce copper proofs - probably get one if they do.

Here is the link to the PCGS news release -> LINK I am not interested in commenting on the particulars of the law suit with regard to the people or the legal positions. But one aspect of the the issue, in general, is certainly notable and alarming. Essentially, the claim seems to be that coins were altered in a very sophisticated manner and submitted to PCGS for authentication. New steps are being implemented to detect alterations...from the news release..."Using energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDX), Fournier [sIC] Transform Infra-Red Spectral analysis (FT-IR), Raman Spectroscopy and other similar analytical techniques, this detection process (code-named by PCGS the PCGS Coin Sniffer™) will analyze the surfaces of a coin in a matter of seconds to detect foreign substances and provide quantitative information about the coin." Look, I know that forgery and doctoring has always been been around with coin collecting - there is no news there. What saddens me is the realization that doctoring is advancing further and faster than I can keep up with ("Their methods included lasering the surfaces of extremely rare proof gold coins to remove surface imperfections, building up commonly-worn or weakly-struck portions of coins, and other physical and chemical processes.").

This is really amazing to me and thanks much for the posting. On the one hand, I am very impressed by the degree of retooling done with the adulterant - that lettering that is presumed to be artificial fits very well to my eyes and some of it is almost entirely 'plastic'. The areas in the second coin where you see the divots after the acetone look somewhat suspicious in the 'before' picture (of course, it's easy to be suspicious when you look at the after picture). Can we completely rule out effects of the acetone? I know acetone *should* not react with copper and this gets tossed around from time to time on the boards, with some swearing that acetone has messed up their copper (nothing like this case though). I have had the experience of acetone mottling the surface luster/toning on a Lincoln before see Evil Acetone Definitely nothing like we see in your pics - but could acetone do a number on patina? Also, can we rule out that the dip was not something else (such as a diluted acid which is typically contained in silver dips)? Looks like a putty job, but I am still curious - does anyone else know more about such matters?

It definitely looks like it was done after minting. Not sure I can even speculate on what tools/techniques were used to do a radial waffling like that - looks cool for sure, but not a mint error, IMO.

Usually, I do not bother with these massive spammings that sometimes occur - but I see so many today that I am prompted to write. In case somebody gets fooled - please do not respond to these kinds of innapropriate messages and I strongly advise folks NOT to click on links contained in these innapropriate spam messages. A moderator will likely come by to clean up, until then I say it is best to simply ignore them *sigh*

It is, indeed, a shield nickel. It is almost impossible to judge the condition from your pics, but it does look like there is a lot of detail - maybe even mint luster - as do many of the other coins in the pic, like the Liberty and Bison nickels next to it. It would be a good idea to leave them be until you can figure out what you have. Please don't handle them or clean them or anything like that. To answer your question directly - if it looks in mint condition, you certainly might consider getting it graded - cost would be something like $25 or so, depending.

Hi tarsdaddy and welcome. I am also a casual collector, and yours is an exciting and intriguing find! Of course, one obvious thing to do would be to have it sent for certification and, as you noted forom doing some research on the net, there are a ton of counterfeits out there. I am going to go out on a limb and say that this is NOT a genuine 09-s vdb and that it is probably an 09 vdb with an added mint mark. This is based on: The crossbar of the B in vdb is not slanted as on the genuine, that looks clear to me. There are 4 mintmark placements and only one where the s is low like yours but it looks like the placement relative to the 0 is close but not like the originals - that looks a little off. It's difficult to tell from the picture, but it looks like some of the surface area around the mintmark is discontinuous from the surrounding area of the coin - like some work had been done around there. That is my two cents and I definitely could be wayyyy off. I hope some others will give their opinions because I really like this kind of topic. Lost Dutchman was excellent with this stuff - hey LD, you around??

ok, it's a little off-topic, but this one would get me to start a collection ... Smaller than a grain of rice