1923 Mercury Dime - You Vs. PCGS

Sorry, I didn't mean to be pedantic.

I think a lot of Mercury dime collectors do care about the distinction, but it's just not one TPGs make. I also happen to think the designations are confusing. If anything, I would expect "fully split bands" to imply they were fully split but not necessarily rounded, whereas "full bands" would imply that they ware rounded.

Regardless, as always, it's up to the buyer to decide if a coin really is full bands. On ebay, you'll see people label anything "full bands", and even in dealers brick-and-mortar stock, I've seen dimes labeled "full bands" that were only like 80% split.

The nice thing about TPGs is that there's a more unified set of terminology and set of standards for these things (even if it's not always applied perfectly or consistently). I think before, everybody was more-or-less doing their own thing and grading on different scales.

I was re-taking pictures of my collection, and I was surprised how amazing this coin looks:


1923 Mercury Dime by CaptainFwiffo, on Flickr

I have several MS66 Mercs, and a few MS67, and this looks as good as any of them in terms of technical grade.

The luster is good, but not blazing, certainly not dull or oxidized looking. It's a relatively early die state that doesn't have heavy metal flow lines yet. It has better luster than some of my MS66 dimes, and the more lustrous ones were struck from more worn dies. None of my 64-65 dimes have so few marks.

I think they just plain missed (which means I got a steal).

Its very nice and looks MS65FB to me.
Congrats on a nice pick up.

I was guessing MS64FB, the head and fields are a bit off of GEM grade. That said, 62vs63 and 64-66 are tuff for me to distinguish w/o seeing them in person and with a strong loupe.

JMHO