You Vs. NGC - Test Your Grading Skills #1

I am guessing MS-65.

I'm not any good at grading dimes but I would like to say I LIKE IT :) I love toned coins and dont care what they look like! Nice dime!

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I'm glad the tpgs are getting this stuff put into plastic and away from collectors. I'd be ashamed to have that coin in my case.

I am sorry, I don't quite understand what you are saying by "getting the coins out of the hands of collectors and into slabs?" Why would you be ashamed to have this coin?

I am not 'questioning' you biggfredd, I am just trying to learn.

I will not attempt to speak for biggfredd, who has been doing this professionally for 40 years. What I will do, though, is offer an opinion as to how someone might think this way:

Mercs tend to be rather strictly-graded, in keeping with what seems to me to be a pattern of "the physically-smaller the coin, the tougher the grading." That may be a generality I'm guilty of getting wrong.

But either way, MS66 is a grade at which eye appeal and strike must certainly factor in. The obverse toning on this coin deserves consideration from that standard, and given that it's a relatively-fresh slab design, it likely looked like that when it was slabbed. It's not exactly "attractive" toning. Furthermore, the striations through the color on the obverse, and the obvious polishing lines on the reverse, indicate a die of....suboptimal condition.

These two taken together ought by right to have a bearing on a coin to which you're assigning the term "Gem." I can easily see how someone experienced in this issue might believe that the maximum-possible grade for an otherwise near-pristine coin like this might be 65.

Which brings me to the third point. Given the color obstructing detail on the obverse, and the very small time window in which a grader gets to look at the coin, can we be sure that details which might lessen the grade are obscured by the toning and were overlooked?

Looks about right for tge grade based on those I've seen. The toning I've ween on ones like that are from the coins on the end of the roll.

The striations are die polishing. Common in every series, less-visible in some than in others. I personally lean towards a "one-size-fits-all" model of coin grading, but it plainly doesn't fit given the relative prominence of these minor defects in a coin or a die. This kind of die polishing is common with Morgans, but much less visible due to the sheer size of the coin. In a Merc, it's a focal point whether you want it to be or not.

Even if you consider the coin against the narrower standard of "the best that mint could do under their own circumstances," where one can make allowances for a New Orleans Morgan, this one deserves harder scrutiny.