Fingerprints!! Very important POLL inside!!
zenny
Posts: 1,547 ✭✭
Was just reading the thread about raw coins and smoeone mentioned slabs protecting coins from fingerprints.
Personally, I tend not to mind a fingerprint on a coin. Maybe if I owned a lot of 19th century proof coinage in ultra high grades I'd feel differently, but I just collect goofy coins that strike my fancy.
In a collection that features many errors, uniquely toned type coins, hobo nickels and other oddball selections it's easy to see why fingerprints wouldn't be all that distracting to me. However, for the average collector, maybe of mid-grade mint-state morgans, perhaps a fingerprint is a horrible besmirching of a numismatic near-gem. And, of course, the high end collector of white coins would probably find fingerprints most toubling.
What say you, fingerprints, proof that a coin lived a good and interesting life, or proof that smoeone actually touched a coin without putting on little white cotton gloves first........
Personally, I tend not to mind a fingerprint on a coin. Maybe if I owned a lot of 19th century proof coinage in ultra high grades I'd feel differently, but I just collect goofy coins that strike my fancy.
In a collection that features many errors, uniquely toned type coins, hobo nickels and other oddball selections it's easy to see why fingerprints wouldn't be all that distracting to me. However, for the average collector, maybe of mid-grade mint-state morgans, perhaps a fingerprint is a horrible besmirching of a numismatic near-gem. And, of course, the high end collector of white coins would probably find fingerprints most toubling.
What say you, fingerprints, proof that a coin lived a good and interesting life, or proof that smoeone actually touched a coin without putting on little white cotton gloves first........
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New collectors, please educate yourself before spending money on coins; there are people who believe that using numismatic knowledge to rip the naïve is what this hobby is all about.
That's true, unless of course the 3rd party grading company put them there in the first place!
<< <i><<< . >>>
That's true, unless of course the 3rd party grading company put them there in the first place! >>
Ouch, even i might be bothered by one of those........
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"Sou Mangueira......."
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
"Seu cabra da peste,
"Sou Mangueira......."
<< <i>If they're obvious, I don't like them... if they're relatively low-key, then it depends on what/where >>
Same here. Depends on size, location, and severity.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
<< <i>If I can detect even the slightest remnant of a fingerprint on a coin I will pass on it, no matter what other great qualities that coin may exhibit. >>
<< <i>If I can detect even the slightest remnant of a fingerprint on a coin I will pass on it, no matter what other great qualities that coin may exhibit. >>
Ditto.
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
Much more symmetrical than I would have predicted.
<< <i>Depends on the placement, size of print, size of coin, type of coin, severity of print and the toning patter on the coin. I've seen some printed coins that make you want to heave and others that don't take away at all from the eye appeal. >>
I agree. I don't own many coins with prints, and I tend not to buy them. Here and there is a lightly fingerprinted coin whose other merits outweigh the negative impact. I have in my hand at this moment, for instance, a really neat proof Washie, a 1979-S with the kind of great color beneath light haze more characteristic of proofs 100 years older, and it has some light prints. You would expect prints on a proof to result in nausea 100% of the time, yet I find this coin strangely compelling. That is why I bought it for the princely sum of $1. You never can tell.
I say off with the finger even though it's sometimes the fault of the collector not the one with the finger.
If you know or suspect a coin has been touched then you should stabilize it with alcohol or acetone before
storage or display.