RARE KEY DATE 1860S SEATED QUARTER DUG!!

[Cal_Cobra]

Tom, his friend Tony, and I went on a 2.5 day weekend detecting adventure and I dug this uber rare 1860 San Francisco mint Liberty Seated quarter on the trip - only 56,000 minted. It's the only coin I dug on the trip.

Here's the before and after shots of the coin:








Here's the rest of the finds from the trip.

First up was a civil war era encampment that the Union Army frequented that seems to pork out lots of buttons and lead, a few relics, and very few coins (which seems really odd?). Id' say that by now, between Tom and I alone, that we've dug well over 600+ conductors there, of which only two were coins. No belt or cartridge box plates, no bit bosses, only one company letter, no regiment numbers, seems odd, but I'm not complaining, I enjoy finding civil war era buttons and lead, and heck we don't even have to go back east B)- Even though research seems to indicate this was mainly a cavalry camp, this is the first button we've found that actually had a cavalry C in the shield. Also that little bit on the bottom right, is actually a two piece button, the front seems to have some kind of goldstone that they polished out a letter "S" and left the rest matte finished. It's a tiny button, if it hadn't had a button loop on the back, I'd likely thought it was a bit of junk - lol





Does anyone know what this is? It was a heck of a signal, some kind of cast bronze/brass decorative thing, we're thinking it could be part of an old gun (see above next to the buttons for a size estimate)

It definitely has a pre-industrial revolution era hand cast look to it like items we find at late 1700's/early 1800's Spanish era sites.





The next site is one that I've known of it's existence for ten years, but it wasn't until I brought Tom out on a ghost town trip, that we discussed the site, and decided to get serious about locating it. It took lots of research time and a few trips to the area to finally find the X marks the spot location. Now that we have, it seems to be a virgin site, all but forgotten to time.




Thanks for looking,
Brian

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

...... rare 1860 San Francisco mint Liberty Seated quarter on the trip -

Brian, The standard to rank "banner", as you know, is tough here. But based on the value Rhedden gives it, it gets my "banner" vote. The value alone does not do it, of course. Heavens knows there's rings all the time that can rank that. But as any coin-hunter knows, you don't often get key-date silver in this rarity range.

Can't wait to get back out there with you !

 

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[rhedden]

To answer Tom's questions about my assigned value, let me offer the following. If the OP's coin had never been in the ground, and it had nice surfaces, it would be worth over $10k to a serious collector of Liberty Seated material with that amount of detail. This coin is a classic example of a "condition rarity" where there are very few high grade specimens available, so the price escalates quite a bit based on small increases in condition. There are very few AU and Unc. examples for collectors to acquire, so there is strong competition for coins in XF and VF grades.

I think the restoration done on the coin was not bad at all. It was quite heavily caked with oxidation when it came up, and it wasn't clear just how sharp the detail was under all the gunk. Regardless of how it was restored, I think the surfaces had some environmental damage from time spent in the dirt. Not much can be done about that, so I am OK with how it was cleaned.

To assign a value, I went through the auction archives at Heritage and looked at coins graded "XF details" with some sort of surface problems. There were a handful that sold recently in that range. The quoted price range is a little bit wide because it takes two people to bid a coin up, and not everyone is willing to buy a coin with surface problems these days.

Regardless of price, congrats to the OP for a great find! This is the best Seated quarter I've seen someone dig since someone posted an 1870-CC on here many years ago.

 

[Sooper Dave]

What an awesome site! Congrats on all the buttons and the Seated quarter!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

To answer Tom's questions about my assigned value, let me offer the following. If the OP's coin had never been in the ground, and it had nice surfaces, it would be worth over $10k to a serious collector of Liberty Seated material with that amount of detail......

Brian: Shame on you for not finding that in normal soil. Like a S.F. park scrape, or .... some such normal ground. Next time you'll be more careful where you find them. Right ?


But seriously now: Rhedden, thanx for the added comments. If I were Brian, I would print these out to be a "dossier" for his collection tray on this particular coin. And it's great to know that he did no valuation damage (considering the starting point). And in fact , probably helped. And for sure is going to be much more pleasing in a shadow box display for his personal collection.

thanx again Rhedden !

 

[Cal_Cobra]

Speechless. Huge Congrats!!

Thank you

Congrats on the seated and nice job cleaning it!

Thanks, not a pro at cleaning coins by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it looks much nicer

What an awesome site! Congrats on all the buttons and the Seated quarter!

Love digging those buttons (hopefully a belt or cartridge plate will surface some day Thanks and HH

 

[4reale]

What is Ezest? I googled it and got some IT company, but no cleaning product. I found 2 Spanish coins locked together for 350 years in 1997, and I cleaned them with very low voltage electrolysis. Took a week to get all the grime off, but they came out almost perfect. The 4 reale dated to 1535, and the 8 reale dated 1554, from the Potosi mint in Peru. I had zero pitting on the coins from that cleaning method

 

[Cal_Cobra]

To answer Tom's questions about my assigned value, let me offer the following. If the OP's coin had never been in the ground, and it had nice surfaces, it would be worth over $10k to a serious collector of Liberty Seated material with that amount of detail. This coin is a classic example of a "condition rarity" where there are very few high grade specimens available, so the price escalates quite a bit based on small increases in condition. There are very few AU and Unc. examples for collectors to acquire, so there is strong competition for coins in XF and VF grades.

I think the restoration done on the coin was not bad at all. It was quite heavily caked with oxidation when it came up, and it wasn't clear just how sharp the detail was under all the gunk. Regardless of how it was restored, I think the surfaces had some environmental damage from time spent in the dirt. Not much can be done about that, so I am OK with how it was cleaned.

To assign a value, I went through the auction archives at Heritage and looked at coins graded "XF details" with some sort of surface problems. There were a handful that sold recently in that range. The quoted price range is a little bit wide because it takes two people to bid a coin up, and not everyone is willing to buy a coin with surface problems these days.

Regardless of price, congrats to the OP for a great find! This is the best Seated quarter I've seen someone dig since someone posted an 1870-CC on here many years ago.

I'm far from a pro on coin cleaning, and I don't know how a professional would've done it, but I was happy with how nicely it cleaned up.

Thanks again for the props, and sharing your knowledge. Although it's a bit of a kill-joy that the bad ground did this to the best silver coin I'm likely to ever find on the west coast, it was still a thrill to dig it from a site we invested so much time and energy into researching and finally locating, hopefully there's a gold coin or two there for us to find

 

[Cal_Cobra]

What is Ezest? I googled it and got some IT company, but no cleaning product. I found 2 Spanish coins locked together for 350 years in 1997, and I cleaned them with very low voltage electrolysis. Took a week to get all the grime off, but they came out almost perfect. The 4 reale dated to 1535, and the 8 reale dated 1554, from the Potosi mint in Peru. I had zero pitting on the coins from that cleaning methodView attachment 1510658

Those reales are sweet!!! What kind of electrolysis setup did you use? Most of the electrolysis I've seen seems to leave a pitted surface on the coins.

E-zest is an almost transparent blue liquid made to "dip" coins into. Apparently it's a mixture of sulfuric acid and thiourea with a colored surfactant. Of course it's not usually recommended to clean coins, but given the original condition of the coin, there wasn't much to loose, and as I don't plan to sell it, or even think about having it graded, it's purely for my own satisfaction. If you plug E-zest into amazon you'll find it.
hh,
Brian