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Are slightly bent coins always detectible in 2x2s?
kranky
Posts: 8,709 ✭✭✭
If the coin does not appear bent on close examination, is it possible for it to still be very slightly bent, and thus be banished to a Genuine slab?
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"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
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.
<< <i>Are slightly bent coins always detectible in 2x2s? >>
No.
It depends on the degree of bend. I've encountered a lot of bent half dimes and trimes that didn't disrupt the Mylar of a 2x2 because one, the bend was very slight, and two, the coin was so small to begin with.
Happily, I've discovered a lot of bent coins can be straightened by sandwiching them between two pieces of wood and hammering. Perhaps not perfectly so, but I've been able to make some bad bends more tolerable.
The first Seated half dime I found while detecting was an 1854, bent almost double. It was very shallow in the ground and registered as a pulltab on the detector's meter, so when I dug this round, curled silvery colored thing, at first I thought I'd found another "tongue" fragment from a 1970s pulltab (or "pop top", if you prefer that term). Only when I saw Lady Liberty did I realize I had a pleasant surprise find. I took the coin home and carefully straightened it with the method above. I was worried I stood some chance of actually snapping it in two, since after all it had been in the ground 150 years. (I guess there was that chance, too.) But in the end, it straightened out OK, even if it remained a little bit wavy.
And that was an extreme case. For a more slight bend, I might've been able to do a much better straightening job.
Edit to add: I don't have any experience in submitting a straightened, previously bent coin to a TPG, however.
Collector since 1976. On the CU forums here since 2001.