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Silver Today - 1888 Seated Liberty Dime


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Great find and wish you more luck next time.

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8 hours ago, CmonNow said:

Four inches down, rang 26-28 on the Equinox. Found at a fairgrounds.

It has some dings and dents, so I think it was stepped on or hit by an old-time lawn mower or something. Some tarnish too. Still has fairly good detail.  (The grid behind it is half-inch squares.)

Also found a very green 1928 wheatie and half a dozen clad and pennies.

Oh, and I found a couple pieces of cut/shaped flint in a couple of my holes. Look like small hide scrapers/blades. Must have been some native activity on that spot back in the day.

1888 Seated Liberty Dime.jpg

 

8 hours ago, CmonNow said:

Four inches down, rang 26-28 on the Equinox. Found at a fairgrounds.

It has some dings and dents, so I think it was stepped on or hit by an old-time lawn mower or something. Some tarnish too. Still has fairly good detail.  (The grid behind it is half-inch squares.)

Also found a very green 1928 wheatie and half a dozen clad and pennies.

Oh, and I found a couple pieces of cut/shaped flint in a couple of my holes. Look like small hide scrapers/blades. Must have been some native activity on that spot back in the day.

1888 Seated Liberty Dime.jpg

Congrats on a GREAT find! I’m still looking for my first Seated, anything after 34yrs😬

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Excellent find!  Seateds are tough in much of the country, maybe the entire country.  (I don't have one yet.)

That ding to the rim is unfortunate.  The condition otherwise looks top notch.  It certainly didn't see much wear before it was lost, waiting > 100 years for you to swing your detector over it.  I don't think they had lawn mowers back then, BTW.  😁  Sometimes coin in parking areas with gravel or crushed limestone just get beat up when cars drive over them and pack down the rocks, but that tends to show up all over the coin and yours looks like just that one rim ding, at least from the obverse view.

Did you check for a mintmark (I stole this image off of PCGS).  Note the 'S' (San Francisco) under the wreath on the reverse:

seated_reverse.jpg.afec812c35acfb4c7097066d37af112e.jpg

Looks like there isn't much value difference between the 'plain' (Philadelphia, so no mintmark) and -S even though there were more than twice as many plains as -S's minted.  No other mint made any that year.  Regardless, excellent find.

 

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12 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Excellent find!  Seateds are tough in much of the country, maybe the entire country.  (I don't have one yet.)

That ding to the rim is unfortunate.  The condition otherwise looks top notch.  It certainly didn't see much wear before it was lost, waiting > 100 years for you to swing your detector over it.  I don't think they had lawn mowers back then, BTW.  😁  Sometimes coin in parking areas with gravel or crushed limestone just get beat up when cars drive over them and pack down the rocks, but that tends to show up all over the coin and yours looks like just that one rim ding, at least from the obverse view.

Did you check for a mintmark (I stole this image off of PCGS).  Note the 'S' (San Francisco) under the wreath on the reverse:

seated_reverse.jpg.afec812c35acfb4c7097066d37af112e.jpg

Looks like there isn't much value difference between the 'plain' (Philadelphia, so no mintmark) and -S even though there were more than twice as many plains as -S's minted.  No other mint made any that year.  Regardless, excellent find.

 

There's a small gouge in the rim on the reverse side too, and that part of the edge has a bit of a 'wave' to it, being a bit bent.

There is no mintmark on the coin.

I looked it up, and the reel-type lawnmower was invented in England in 1830.  I know my mom's family had one as early as the late 1920s or so, because she and her six older brothers and sisters told stories about having to push it around the yard on hot summer days.  Your idea about the coin being driven over on gravel is a better idea though.  There is gravel under the grass in the area where I found it, a lot in some spots, less in others.

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4 hours ago, CmonNow said:

I looked it up, and the reel-type lawnmower was invented in England in 1830.  I know my mom's family had one as early as the late 1920s or so, because she and her six older brothers and sisters told stories about having to push it around the yard on hot summer days.

Those Brits were quite inventive and industrious (still are).  Gosh, you've reminded me of my younger days when we had to use one of those human propelled reel-type mowers at my grandparents' house, and to make matters worse it hadn't been sharpened since (what seemed like) 1830!  They probably hadn't greased it since then either.  I recall the bald tires just slid along the ground.

Yes, I was thinking power mowers but stand corrected -- some people did try to make things look trim and fit back then, too.  Even with the dings your dime is still a pretty display piece.  The fact that it shows hardly any wear adds a lot to its beauty and intrigue, IMO.  Hope there are more exciting finds out there for you.  Wish I could hunt a fairgrounds.  Since I first saw a metal detector I thought "wow, fairgrounds are likely overloaded with old coins!"  Someday maybe I'll get a chance to test that hypothesis.  Every county here in Indiana (92 of them) has a fairgrounds AFAIK, and have been putting on those fairs annualy since way back when all dimes, quarters, etc. were silver.  Maybe many have been searched by now, but access tends to be very limited so maybe not all of them.

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