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How NOT to list on - ebay1916s USPI 5 Ctvs (UPDATE)

The seller of this lot got lucky, since apparently there were two of us who took the time to check, but if the other person (whoever that may be) did not catch it, I would have gotten a $60 coin for $5 and change.


Edited April 6th to add...
I guess it is MORE than a $60 coin.



Here is how he listed the lot: Phillipine Coins - United States of America
That attention grabber was paired with this Search Results picture: image
And the two pictures on his auction page (FULL SIZE) looked like this...
image

In addition, he listed this auction with User ID kept private while sporting zero feedback, and if that didn't instill confidence, two of his other listings used the exact same picture when he first put them up. I noticed he took one of them down later.

Despite all the red flags, if you looked very closely at the blurry far right coin in his teeny-tiny picture, you can barely make out that the 2 by 2 says, "5 centavos 1916S", and his brief description confirms it.

The 1916-S 5 Centavos had a mintage of just 300,000, and it is the second rarest of the series, (next to the extremely rare 1918s 5 Centavos MULE).

So I asked if he would send me a larger image by email in order to better judge condition, and he sent the following, (which I rotated, cropped and auto-leveled with Photoshop).
image
It's still blury and a generally poor quality image, but it was enough for me to determine it was a $60 coin. The other two coins were of no consequence, as the 1916s 20 Centavos is worth less than $10, and the other is pratically worthless except for silver content. I'll probably dump them both for $8.66 (there's a reason for that odd amount). As I said, he got lucky, and though I would have been a lot happier winning the lot for less than $6, I am still okay with what I finally paid - $38.66 TOTAL.

UPDATE
After several acetone soaks, I finally got around to photographing this coin. The reason for numerous acetone soaks was because the first removed so much gunk (PVC residue? I think so), that I decided to continue until nothing more came off. Here's the result after the acetone soaks.
image

If this was a bronze, I'd dip it in olive oil. Does anyone think that would be neccessary or of help with a 75% copper 25% nickel coin?

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