Semi key date Barber dime

[sjvalleyhunter]

*WARNING* For all of you coin purists who cringe at the mere thought of the words "cleaning" and "coin" in the same paragraph, then continue reading at your own risk. I will forewarn you now, I did clean this coin. In fact, I cleaned the heck out of it.

So a few weeks ago I was online and looking through some older, historic photos of a few of the surrounding towns. I ran across a picture of a two story hotel that stood at the turn of the century. It has long since burned down but the property it was once on now belongs to the county and is currently undeveloped. I decided to take a little drive out of town to see what I could find at this site.

Unfortunately, I quickly discovered this was one of the most iron infested sites that I have hunted in a long time. I had to use the TTF function on the E-trac and slow my swing speed to a snail's pace. On top of that, about half of the site had foot high weeds that made swinging that much more difficult.

I ended up getting a consistent 12-44 signal that showed to be at about three inches. I figured it was just a penny but I don't like to skip over good solid signals so I started to dig. The ground was so hard that it was darn near the density of cement. It took me literally three or four minutes to chip away at the dirt to the point where the rim of the coin was barely visible. It was dark in color which confirmed to me that it was indeed a penny. I continued to jab away at the dirt around the coin and was eventually able to pry it out. As I wiped the dirt off of it, I suddenly noticed a bright silver scratch in it. It was about this time that I realized that it was a bit smaller than a penny and had a reeded edge. When I rinsed it off I found that it was an 1896 Barber dime with a San Francisco mint Mark. This dime has the second lowest mintage of Barber dimes, only behind the 1895-O.

After I got home and looked at it for a bit I made the decision to clean it. Yes, I know that devalues it, but it already had a gash in it anyway. Furthermore, I have never sold any of my detecting finds. I didn't particularly care if I took some of the monetary value from it since I will never sell it. I enjoy my collection of finds and sharing it with others. This coin is a nice addition, but it was just plain ugly. It was so dark and crusted over that it was nearly unrecognizable as a Barber dime. In my opinion, I'd rather have a cleaned and devalued coin than a black disk with a gash in it.

I didn't take a picture of the coin before I started to clean it, but here it is after I got some of the crud off of it. The black around the edges is the stuff that had covered the entire coin.



Here it is after I got it all cleaned up.



At this point it was too clean, so I artificially toned it to bring it back to a bit more natural looking state. I'm now pleased with how it looks.



Oh, at that site I also ended up pulling out two wheats, a 1942 Mercury dime that had been through a fire, and a couple of other odds and ends.

 

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[btjbtj]

Forget the loop. To get graded it would be looked at under a microscope. You would see all the scratching and swirls from cleaning it

Interesting! Always wondered about that. Some of the old copper coins we find are simply unrecognizable unless we do some sort of cleaning! -Lisa

 

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[Carolina Tom]

That's a sweet coin. Congrats on the key date, and I like the cleaning too.

 

[sjvalleyhunter]

That's a sweet coin. Congrats on the key date, and I like the cleaning too.

Thank you, sir.

 

[JerseyDigger19]

That's really a fantastic cleaning job. I'm one of those coin purists too (usually) but in this case I agree 100% with what you did and how you did it. Sure the cleaning is detectable under a Microscope but the black crud was detectable with the naked eye! A simply fantastic cleaning job.

 

[sgtled3533]

Hey sjvalleyhunter, I live in Fresno also and have been trying to do a lot more detecting lately. I only used to gold prospect but I hated driving up to gold country every day I wanted to search. So I bought a second detector (Fisher gold bug pro DP) that I can use to hunt coins and relics. Have been to tons of parks and schools in Fresno/clovis but that's been about it. Any suggestions for a good location or area to hunt? Obviously I don't expect ya to give up your secret hole, but if you got any tips OR if you ever want some company, give me a shout! I've been going out almost every day I can. Have found tons of clad, a few wheat pennies and one 1962 silver dime. Fresno isn't too bad...some good history here. Hope to hear back from ya! Thank you

 

[sgtled3533]

And good find on that barber! Who cares if people don't like cleaned coins! Like you said before, we usually don't sell our finds anyways! Better to have it looking good than look like a rusty turd

 

[sjvalleyhunter]

And good find on that barber! Who cares if people don't like cleaned coins! Like you said before, we usually don't sell our finds anyways! Better to have it looking good than look like a rusty turd

Thank you. I sent you a pm.

 

[Wildcat1750]

Nice cleaning and toning. I would be very happy with those results and I don't plan to sell the coins that I've found metal detecting any time soon. I have bookmarked this thread in case I ever want to try it myself.