1859-s Seated Half - Counterfeit or Damaged?

Manifest_Destiny

What do you think is going on with this one? Not my coin, I just ran across it on ebay.

Shurke

Plugged and poorly tooled in an attempt to disguise the work maybe?

Although there’s heavy tooling in more than one spot….

Davidk7

Authentic, but heavily tooled and devices reengraved

Crypto

Agree with previous posts

AUandAG

Is that a chopmark on the reverse center?

bob

hummingbird_coins

may

Maybe a plugged hole?

JBN

WB-2.
The poor dear.

hummingbird_coins

My theory is that this coin circulated heavily in the Orient, and gathered numerous chopmarks. Later, it fell into the hands of a collector, who attempted to "fix" it by smoothing and re-engraving the surfaces. However there must have been one deeper than the rest (center reverse) that lived to tell the tale.

CRHer700

Real, but a C coin.

epc

Quite a few Seated half dimes with similar 're-engraving' show up on ebay.

ChopmarkedTrades

@hummingbird_coins said:
My theory is that this coin circulated heavily in the Orient, and gathered numerous chopmarks. Later, it fell into the hands of a collector, who attempted to "fix" it by smoothing and re-engraving the surfaces. However there must have been one deeper than the rest (center reverse) that lived to tell the tale.

Agree with this, the coin was chopmarked and someone attempted to crudely repair it. There are still two Chinese characters visible on the reverse, including a large one in the center of the eagle.

Crypto

@ChopmarkedTrades said:

@hummingbird_coins said:
My theory is that this coin circulated heavily in the Orient, and gathered numerous chopmarks. Later, it fell into the hands of a collector, who attempted to "fix" it by smoothing and re-engraving the surfaces. However there must have been one deeper than the rest (center reverse) that lived to tell the tale.

Agree with this, the coin was chopmarked and someone attempted to crudely repair it. There are still two Chinese characters visible on the reverse, including a large one in the center of the eagle.

Agree with this and would add the date and MM support that hypothesis as they were exported in bulk to the Orient

seatedlib3991

Wow. That coin looks like a Jack O Lantern one month after Halloween. wonder where he's been. James

Manifest_Destiny

I'm glad I posted this for discussion. I didn't even notice that the damage on the reverse was a chop mark.

WinLoseWin

from Imgflip Meme Generator

FrankH

@hummingbird_coins said:

Rare parrot variety!

Cougar1978

Damaged

lermish

^ I'm glad we solved the mystery!

johnny9434

@Crypto said:
Agree with previous posts

Agree 👍

WinLoseWin

One question is whether it was done for the collector market or was it done way back when to make it more acceptable for circulating in the US after it returned from the Orient?

Typekat

I’m voting Bogus.
Looks like an oldtime counterfeit, with that inexplicable parrot head eagle

• tooled
• re-engraved shield

Crypto

@Typekat said:
I’m voting Bogus.
Looks like an oldtime counterfeit, with that inexplicable parrot head eagle

• tooled
• re-engraved shield

The MM, date placement and denticals are all spot on speaking to being a real host. Looks like silver too coupled to the known chop mark test drill by the date being period correct. Chops were beyond worthless for a dozen decades and especially the common dates that were chopped spent their years languishing in junk bins and treated as such. It is not uncommon to see chopped coins mutilated. There simply was no downside