Grading An 1874-S Trade Dollar

Diane,
Welcome to the CC forum. I'm by no means an expert on Trade dollars but I cannot see anything on your coin that would raise a red flag. Others on this board are much more qualified than me on this subject.
As far as protecting the coin,I would purchase an airtite for it. They are inexpensive and would give exellent protection.

Hi Diane!! First of all Welcome to our forum!!
Right off the bat I'll tell ya that I am not an expert on these great coins. So I'll post some info for you & a little history.

This coin was issued for circulation in the Orient to compete with dollar-sized coins of other countries. Many peices that circulated in the orient were counter-stamped with Oriental characters, known as "chop marks". They were legal tender in the U.S., but when silver prices declined, Congress repealed the provision and authorized the treasury to limit coinage to export demand. In 1887, the Treasury redeemed ALL Trade dollars that were not mutilated. The law authorizing Trade dollars was repealed in 1887. Some modifications were done to them when minted a few follows.

Reverse#1: Berry under eagle's left talon; arrowhead ends over over 0. Used on all coins from all mints in 1873 & 1874, and occasionally in 1875 & 1876.

Reverse#2: Without extra berry under talon; arrowhead ends over 2.

Obverse#1: Ends of scroll point to left; extended hand has only three fingers.

Obverse#2: Ends of scroll point downward; hand has four fingers.

Since you received this beauty from your dad, I would be willing to bet it is legit. It certainly looks legit but hard to say cause scanners is not best way to take a picture. As for its grade I'll post what the Red Book says to wit:

AU-50--Slight trace of wear on Liberty's left breast & left knee & on hair above ear, as well as eagles head, knee & wing tips.
MS-60--No trace of wear. Light blemishes.

Soo, IMHO, I would venture to say using your picture now, I would venture that the coins IS a AU (About Circulated) coin. Your pics show some wear on the left breast and left knee, so therefore, it cannot be Unc. As for its approx value, I would guess mind ya about $250.00 for AU-50. A quick search on ebay shows from a low of $122 in AU-50 to a high that was actually won @ $445 for an AU-55 specimen.

Finally, there were 2,549,000 of these beauts minted. I hope this little info helps--

O yea, besides using the hard plastic, I use an item called SAFLIP, they are inert double pocket coin flips for which you can purchase I believe about 50 of them for reasonble price. Also storage is key to preserve coins, and a nice dry, dark place helps preserve them.

One more thing I forgot to add, Weight 27.22 grams; composition .900 silver, .100 copper; diameter 38.1mm; reeded edge; mints; Philly, Carson City & San Francisco.

CiscO

O_O

Now, that's making a proper forum entrance.

Welcome, Diane. All appearances point to a real Trade dollar, but the visual clues, as you might have realized by now, are not always enough. Given that, if uncirculated, your coin could be worth $1000+, I'd suggest getting it to some sort of verification service.

I'm emailing you.

Diane, You have a ver nice peice and from the pictures I see absolutely nothing that screams out a counterfit to me, it looks like a very beautiful coin as well and as SuperDave said could be worth alot of money. I would definately send it to one of the top three grading companies, not only for grading but just to prove to everyone else its real, alot of people will not touch a raw (unslabbed) Trade dollar because of them being so highly counterfited. Here is what I would do, If I wanted to keep the coin myself I would probably just send it in to ANACS myself just to authenticate it (the grade will be a extra bonus),if I thought I may sometime want to sell it ANACS would be fine for authentication pourposes and it would probably sell quick in a ANACS Slab but people seem to pay more money for PCGS and NGC slabs PCGS being the highest. Not that they are any better at what they do it is just people will usually dig a little deeper for these slabs over anacs but ANACS does a fine job of authenticating and atleast send it to one of the three for that pourpose alone.You can send it to ANACS yourself without joining a special collecting club, NGC and PCGS you will either have to join their club or you will have to have a dealer send it in for you to get graded/authenticated.

Diane, I have reviewed the scans you posted and I don't see anything that jumps right out indicating you have one of the numerous counterfeits. That said - I would definitely like to see the third die. One of the most difficult "sides" of a coin to replicate is the edge. Most coin authenticators look at the edge first. It iften makes looking at the obverse and reverse unnecessary.

There are numerous methods used to place reeds on the edge of a coin but only ONE correct way in the case of the Trade dollar. The reeds are applied with a collar die that forms the outer perimeter of the striking (or coining) chamber of the press. When the planchet enters the space between the dies a collar die rises to enclose the planchet and the force of the strike extrudes the coin metal into the reeds forming the edge at the same instant the rest of the coin is made. This makes the edge distinctive and means that only certain kinds of "errors" can be seen on the edge.

Counterfeits on the other hand have the edges applied in many different ways. I will list a few of the ways.

1. A collar die - Yes unfortunately some of the best made forgeries do actually use a collar die but they are in the minority.
2. No edge at all - This does happen more than you would think so check. It often displays a seam line from the casting process. This seam may be partially or completely ground off so look for filing marks.
3. Hand cut reeds - Some earlier counterfeits were edged with a file and the reeds were cut in one at a time. They are triangular in cross section and are very irregular in spacing. Since this is a time consuming process, this points to an early forgery where labor costs were minimal versus the value of the coin.
4. Rolled on edge - The counterfeiter rolls a reeded die against the edge of the coin or the planchet (in the case of a strike) either before or after the coin is produced. In the case of a casting, this allows the counterfeiter to hide the seam line or the file marks made by the seam removal. In a struck coin, a secondary step provides clues for detection. A real coin has a continuous struck surface on all three sides - but when the edge is applied AFTER the coin is made - the edge reeds will cause a distortion of the surfaces at the intersection. (You only have to watch for ejection damage on originals but that is on one side not both). A pre edged planchet will have a reversed distortion of the reeded edge by the strike. The rolled on edge will also have one or more OVERLAPS in the reeding. This is the easist counterfeit feature to spot. ANY COIN WITH AN OVERLAP IN THE REEDS IS FAKE.
There may be one or more overlaps depending on the technology used to edge the coin.
5. Ring die - This is the most common technique used in the mass production of counterfeits - epecially the Chinese Injection Molded copies. The completed coin is taken from the mold and the edge is ground down to remove the seam, sprue and vent traces. Once it is smoothed it is forced - usually in a stack along with several other coins) through a groved ring die. This methods means there may be no overlap (unless they have a poor ring die) but invariably the pressure is not perfectly uniform around the entire perimeter. Wherever the pressure is lowest - the metal may not push all the way to the bottom of the die groves - leaving a reed that has a concave top which sometimes actually shows metal curving inward toward the center of the top of the reed. Also at the ends of the reed where pressure drops rapidly this often makes the reed look like it SPLITS right near the end. (That is called a split tail reed). Also some small amount of metal tends to be dragged out toward the face of the coin on the "upstream" side of the coin as it leaves the ring die. This is often ground off by a final finishing step which rounds off the sharp corner of the coin. ROUNDED CORNERS ARE ALWAYS SUSPECT.
6. Cast reeding - Some forgers making copies have tried to add reeds to the molds used to make the copies. This technique is ALWAYS easy to spot unless the forger tumble polishes the coin to a rather low grade. As you can visualize it requires a very specialized mold and very fine quality control not to be VERY obvious on the finished product.

Those are the main edge technologies used. There are many variables and this list could be expanded by "what ifs" to a very long length. But you should get the idea.

Also weigh the coin and have someone perform a Specific Gravity analysis. That is very helpful to quickly identify the off metal forgeries and the coin is not damaged. There are full weight silver forgeries however. These modern fakes are made for collectors and the value of the silver is minimal compared to the value as a coin - so real silver does not mean a real coin necessarily.

The ultimate test (for now anyway) is an XRF (Xray Flourescence) test which can assay the coin in a non-destructive way. You get a precise reading of the silver content but more importantly the alloy metals and the trace elements that should and SHOULD NOT be found in a Trade dollar. These assays are of course not routinely published (I don't share my results totally) because a counterfeiter could add trace contaminants to his alloy to come up with essentially undetectable forgeries. For example - I specialize in Mexican Cap and Ray 8Rs and a real 8R from the Zacatecas mint in the mid 1830s WILL ALWAYS HAVE GOLD AS A CONTAMINANT. So a forger has to add gold to his mix or you can reject the end result as a fake in every case. The gold being there is now a well known fact, but the other trace contaminants are not as well known.

I hope this helps. If you have any questions about this just ask.

Swamperbob's reply gives me a more than just something to go on -- it's really an education! Thank you! I am reluctant to unwrap the coin until I have something proper to store it in, now that I've taken it out of its holder.

I'm going to order some holders. Someone suggested a SAFLIP. I haven't found those yet. Someone recommended another holder that looks like it's plastic, but I went and lost the URL before I finished ordering it. If anyone would like to recommend a particular kind, brand, or source for holders that won't cause PVC damage but will let me admire the coin, I'd be grateful.

Thanks. This is a great forum!

yes I agree if there is a counterfit out there swamperbob is the one to point it out, he has more knowledge on the subject than anyone else I know of and he is a real asset to this community. if there ever was a doubt of any coin being legit he is the one to talk to

quote:

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Originally posted by Diane

Swamperbob's reply gives me a more than just something to go on -- it's really an education! Thank you! I am reluctant to unwrap the coin until I have something proper to store it in, now that I've taken it out of its holder.

I'm going to order some holders. Someone suggested a SAFLIP. I haven't found those yet. Someone recommended another holder that looks like it's plastic, but I went and lost the URL before I finished ordering it. If anyone would like to recommend a particular kind, brand, or source for holders that won't cause PVC damage but will let me admire the coin, I'd be grateful.

Thanks. This is a great forum!

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I just switched my raw Morgans over to these:

http://www.brent-krueger.com/coinedge1.html

They're inexpensive (20¢ each in quantity), chemically inert and best of all, you can see the edge of the coin when they're sealed in. For me, that's a big point because some of what I collect has a differing reed count.

For the moment, nothing's stopping you from wandering down to your local hobby store and picking up some cardboard flips to put your coins in. Nothing wrong with that, as a temporary solution.