Best Of

Not Coinstar but from a TD Bank Penny Arcade. A 1700 year old Roman coin.

Here is my find from 3-4 years ago - ca. 200 BC Carmo - a Greek colony in what is now Spain.

Oldest US find - 1865 IHC

As to the look of Fairmont coins, I think Fathom captures it pretty well when he says "spectacularly original." They stand as reminders that almost all gold from the 1800s (including most of the stickered coins in my sets) have likely had some form of processing at some point in time, A truly natural look comes with a price - a crust that not everyone is going to find attractive.

When one of the first Fairmont sets was auctioned, I heard a dealer say that he sent his son to lot view the Fairmont coins so that he could understand what "natural" and "original" gold coins really looks like and why the terms are so overused in describing coins that are for sale.

Can we show some love for the dealer? So many posters on this forum are accusing dealers of dishonesty etc.

I picked up this set of three pence coins for a good price recently off of eBay. The coins had PVC on them, I believe it’s from the blue plastic holder they were housed in. All the coins had PVC on them, some had progressed far enough to show the green but many just looked hazy. I soaked them all in acetone and it’s gone now, had to do multiple rinses to get it off. But these images from the auction are a good example showing the range of appearance that coins end up with as the PVC progresses from just being hazy to turning green