Grading help - Mishandled coin?

gxseries

Not too sure what this will grade due to some mishandling I believe.





You can see the scratches at the fields, and unforunately a sharp edge damage (staple damage?) very close to the right wing of the double headed eagle.

What is your opinion on this? AU 55?

Now there are two little .swf clips to add with this, which may seem to be "prooflike" or rather, the coin does certainly have prooflike surfaces, if not proof itself. If you can't play them, I will add in the .wmv file later.

Front
Back

Both files are approximately 450kbs and about 15 secs long.

1jester

Just a wild guess, but I don't think it's AU55. More like AU50, if that. And if it has hairlines from a cleaning, I'd suppose it's more likely a NET XF40.

lordmarcovan

But I think it's pretty.

MSD61

I'd say AU50 while I don't see any cleaning but there are some rim hits and the high points look a wee bit flat.

gxseries

I am not going to disagree if it happened to be cleaned ages ago.
But the fact that the scratches are on the field suprises me as I would expect the damages more towards the macro hairline area.

By any chance have you taken a look at the .swf files? That is the point that I am trying to make on it's reflective surfaces.

MSD61

I'm sorry but I am not seeing hairlines in your image. Just the scratches which do not look like hairlines to me. I'd also say this coin had a dip or two in the pass but again it maybe that way I am seeing the image. Still a nice looking piece!

gxseries

Ah, brilliant. Thanks!

lordmarcovan

<< <i>By any chance have you taken a look at the .swf files? That is the point that I am trying to make on it's reflective surfaces. >>

Yes, those were pretty neat! They certainly show the prooflike qualities of the coin. Unfortunately, the coin is so small and/or blurry in those files that one can't really tell if it is truly prooflike or if it was polished.

1jester

MiLord brings up a great point. It's not clear whether the proof-like qualities of the coin were achieved by polishing/whizzing the coin, or if the coin looked like that straight from the mint. Now I'm curious, were proof issues minted of this coin? If so, perhaps this is an impaired proof? The surfaces are amazingly bright and reflective. I'd be interested in seeing the coin in hand, but that's impossible. Perhaps you could take a good magnifying glass (10-20 power) and study the surfaces to see if it was polished.

Nice coin in general.

gxseries

Sorry for being awfully obxious, but what are some obvious tellsigns of polished surfaces or fields?

My first thoughts are that, if the surfaces happened to be polished, wouldn't there be some tellsigns around the high raised points from the fields, especially around the ferns area?

Steve27

I see an EF coin with no sign of polishing. The only question I have, relates to whether its been dipped (i.e. over-dipped). The paste-white lack of luster leads to my assertion, but it may just be the pic.

gxseries

That is the best that I can manage out of my digital camera without add in any artifical lighting The lack of whiteness I guess is due to the scanning process, which doesn't often capture the brightness of a coin.



There are three other zoomed image that I took by putting my hand lens in front of the digital camera.

Well their dimensions are a bit too big, so I am not going to put them as an attached file here or I would be "spamming" the board.

Image 1 with no lighting
Image 2 with slight lighting
Image 3 with lighting

I honestly don't know what this coin's grading is like - I would suspect that it could have been dipped on just the observe only as it's surface is too reflective compared to the reverse. The thing is that it seems prooflike around the ferns area and the rest is quite heavily scratched. It is just that my digital camera doesn't capture the coin's details ultra-macro as I like it to be. I might need some tips on how to capture high resolution images with what I have at the moment... I sure don't want to upgrade to some 6megapixel cameras right now just for the sake of this...

1jester

It's still hard for me to see. You say it is "heavily scratched" and that appears consistent with surfaces that have been whizzed.

I'd still like to know if there was a proof minted for this date. Perhaps you have a proof that has been in circulation.

gxseries

There are no exact mintage of proof Imperial Russian coins simply because no one bothered to take such mintage figures during those era. So I have no idea if there happened to be proof version of such coins. But I have seen proof rubles as early as 1817, if I am not wrong,

Some examples are:

Link 1
Link 2

And as for that... there is a good reason why such coins are so ridiciously expensive... simply because no one knows what the proof mintage figures are like... Krause might give some random figure and prices but honestly the pricing and the figures do not reflect the current trends of what is going on in reality.

Steve27

" You say it is "heavily scratched" and that appears consistent with surfaces that have been whizzed."

I disagree Jester, If whizzed, the surfaces would look very smooth.

1jester

You're right, Steve. But I think whizzing can be detected with a magnifying glass. And this coin apparantly is extremely shiny. I still wonder why. Maybe it's a proof.