Design Guide Pricing
how do i look up the value of an 1858o half dime?
design … what is that? i dintt know what all the stuff in the price guide stands for.
The “design” is just what the picture on the coin is called–if you’ve got a “Lincoln cent”, “Lincoln” is the design on the coin. In the case of your coin, it’s a “Liberty Seated” half dime.
As you might guess, the value of the coin depends on the condition. Coin collectors use a 70 point scale for grading coins, with “1″ being almost a flat disk of metal that you can barely identify, and “70″ being an absolutely perfect coin, like it just left the dies, without any of the bumps, scrapes, or other abuse that a coin is subjected to. Any coin with no wear at all is called “mint state” (or sometimes “uncirculated”) and rates at least a 60 on the scale. The fewer dings and scrapes from contact with other coins (while still having no wear from circulation), the closer it is to 70.
The 70 point scale goes along with an older scale that is still used to describe the condition of the coin. A “Good” coin might only rate 4 or 6 on the scale, while a “Fine” coin might be 15. You’ll often see them used together, like “F-15″ or “MS-63″.
So, to find out how much it’s worth, you need to know what condition it’s in. Most guide books give you an idea of what to look for, or in the case of your coin, you can check here http://www.pcgs.com/Photograde/#/Seated-Half-Dime/Grades and scroll over until you find the coin that best matches the condition that yours is in.
Grading is hard (collectors spend their lives looking at coins, and sometimes disagree on the exact grade of a coin) but that should give you a general idea. When your grading your coin, be tough–if your coin looks _almost_ as good as the one listed as F12, then call it a VG10. Then, you can use the price guide to figure out how much it’s worth. BTW, the values you see are almost always what it would cost to buy the coin from a dealer. Dealers usually pay about half that.
Whatever you do, don’t clean it or try to “improve” the coin’s appearance in any way. Cleaning damages the coin, and kills the collector value.
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