Seated Liberty Halves

F117ASR

Hello everyone. I wanted to ask all of you seated coin experts out there , if you know of any great sites that can teach me about seated liberty halves and detecting counterfeits, tooled, and cleaned seated coinage. I do plan to buy a book in the near future but I would like some web addresses too. Also could someone tell me why no one would bid on this item? I thought that for an AU it is a decent price. Is it cleaned, fake, what? Thanx guys.

airplanenut

Looks like it has been cleaned--one clue is around the stars... the protected area right around the stars can't be touched easily by most cleaning methods... see how it's a different color than the rest of the fields? Also, the coin looks too white for an AU.

Jeremy

F117ASR

Cool. I see I have tons to learn. So what should a cleaned one go for anyway? It still has kind of sharp details. would it be an XF-40?

Catch22

As a general rule of thumb, net grade the coin down one grade for a light cleaning or dipping. I don't know of any particular site that provides what you are looking for. There are some good sellers that specialize in Seated coins that I can provide if you would like.

roadrunner

I'd pass on the ebay non-NGC/PCGS/ANACS coins. Your odds are getting fair value in the long haul are not good. This 1876 half seems closer to XF45 than AU but it could go either way. In any case it's probably fairly priced at around $115. Obviously either no one thought this was AU or it slipped by everyone. What does the reverse look like???????? Never buy a coin w/o a scan of both sides unless it is slabbed and you like the obverse well enough. My personal experience with common date coins like this is that it is easy to buy them, but the retail markup is oppressive and you're lucky to get 60-75% of value when you go to sell. If you really want to concentrate on seated halves get the Wiley Bugert book and start cherry picking varieties at no premium while you develop your grading chops. I'd also suggest trying to stick to underrated dates and varieties and leave the common dates alone. Common coins are always that and they are tougher to move...unless you are a dealer with a strong retail following.

There is no real book out there on detecting fake seated coins per se. But thankfully the seated area is probably the one area in US coinage where fakes appear fairly infrequently. The counterfeiters prefer to stick to gold coins and 20th century rarities that have monster demand. For some reason you rarely see seated liberty fakes. And if you stick to slabbed coins, you're fine anyways.

roadrunner

islemangu

these fakes are just to complicated...why bother trying to learn all that cr%p
staying with the big 3 in pastic on all Seated Liberty halves/dol and Trade dollars seems the best route now

roadrunner

Oh yes, and join the Liberty Seated Collectors Club or at least purchase the 4 volumes of articles written from 1974-1996.

roadrunner

lathmach

Roadrunner has some good advise. Buy the Wiley-Bugert book and join the Liberty Seated Collectors Club.
There is still a lot of upside potential in the seated series of coins.

Ray

F117ASR

Thanx for the advice guys. It looks as though the Wiley Bugert book is an out of print book.

Catch22

It is, try Amazon.com. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll see what I can do to locate one for you.

Edited to say.....nevermind....here's one.....and only one. Also consider buying Walter Breen's Encyclopedia. Both expensive books, but i've never regretted getting either one. WB Book

roadrunner

The WB book is often available at larger coin shows. I picked up mine at the FUN show and had Randy Wiley sign it. I think Dick Osborne was selling them but I cannot recall for sure.

roadrunner

Trime

I agree with all the advise given. You can find better value.