Bowers And Ruddy Morgan Dollar

I like your pictures better than the first set.

I think it's pretty neat that you have a receipt from THE Q. David Bowers. Wonder if you could get him to grade the coin and then show him the receipt.

Gorgeous toning and would probably grade at least MS-65 by today's standards. I don't actively collect Morgan dollars but I wouldn't mind owning this one especially with the Bowers and Ruddy receipt. 1880 was one of the few early years of the Morgan dollar series that the San Francisco Mint got everything just right and produced some of their best quality coins.

Ed
ANA LM-3175

Gorgeous, and IMO a slam dunk at 65. I see only the one horizontal mark east of the point of the chin to detract, and the fields are darn-near pristine. 66 is not out of the realm of possibility, especially since they're (relatively) common for this year/mint.

Idle question, epikur - do you have the ability to get detailed close-ups? If so, could you shoot and post the date?

I wouldn't pay above MS64 on this, it wouldn't pass muster as MS65. This coin is known for super clean surfaces, sharp strike, and frost, and super luster. CONDER- I stand by what I said in my previous post. We were using the term MS65 in 1975 and so was the Grey Sheet, possibly a year or so before.. A coin graded MS65 back in those days was flawless, I was there. A MS67 then would have had to be a super coin.

I'm obviously not in Conder's head, but I don't think that was what he was implying.

The simple fact that MS67 was not an "official" grade in 1978 doesn't indicate much on its' own. The "Powers that Be" in numismatics were just as conservative then as they are now, and change came slowly. And if there were any man alive who would have been on the leading edge of the envelope, Bowers would have been that man.

Keep in mind: by 1978, Bowers and Ruddy had already built their second hugely-successful coin business. The first, Empire Coin Co., was sold to Paramount in 1965. Note the connection. After that, he took a few years' break to pursue his other passion, automatic musical instruments, with Terry Hathaway. They formed a large-scale reseller of music boxes.

Then in 1970 (IIRC) Bowers teamed up again with Ruddy (who took that time off to research and publish Photograde, a book you might be familiar with) to form Bowers & Ruddy Galleries. That firm was one of the standouts of the time, handling many of the most important collection liquidations of the day including the Garrett Collection. In 1978, Bowers was President of PNG, and he'd already earned from his alma mater - Penn State - their Alumni Achievement Award.

I don't think he had much left to prove by then.

A written statement from the seller of this coin indicating that he was the original purchaser would likely suffice to verify provenance. I have no trouble believing either A) If anyone in that time were assigning MS67 as a "tweener" grade, Q. David Bowers would be that man, and B) The coin indicated here would easily qualify for that description, in context. Where did "MS65" fit against our perceptions of today? We couldn't agree as to what "MS65" is today, much less figure out what it was in 1978. Heck, for that matter, was the toning that well-developed 34 years ago? I kinda doubt it.

It's unlikely this provenance would ever be anything but a neat footnote, but it would be cool to have.

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