Canada 1905 25c Pick Up Today

Marbury, I currently have one coin on E-bay for sale. If your interested in it, we could work out a trade + $ for your 1905?

Glenn

marbury - You mention that it is EF by UK standards, which should translate to MS in Canadian standards.

This is something that bothers me about the standards of different countries/people. Does MS not mean uncirculated in the UK? The way I see it, MS is MS is MS. A coin shouldn't be MS using one grading standard, and below MS using another.

jg86 just to say that your XF is our VF.....my coin was described by the auction house as EF or better and they have an excellent rep...so better is UNC.

Priorpence...my coin was shipped today so might get it tomorrow and I will seek to provide better quality scans in natural light.

I might have a partial answer for you. I'm at work, and don't have any literature to look at, so I can't confirm what I'm going to say.

First, I do believe that while 1905 wasn't a low mintage, it was below average.

Second, the Mint changed the reverse dies in 1906 from the Small Crown to the Large Crown. I would hypothesize that coins produced with the Large Crown design were less susceptible to wear than the Small Crowns were. (I believe the official reason for the switch was that the Crown didn't look proportionate to the rest of the design, but I'm sure there were other minor changes made other than just the size of the crown).

Third, since it was the last year for these dies, it's possible that the quality was not as good as it was in prior years (1902 - 1904).

If I'm right, this would explain why lower grades are rarer (lower mintage, and the surviving coins would have been more worn, and been more likely to be melted), and higher grades are rarer (design was more likely to be worn).

Don't take this as fact, wait for someone else to chime in, but I wanted to throw something out there that other's could build off of at least.

You're right we tend to go F, VF, EF, UNC. When I say we, I mean Brits at home. I often use the same parlance as you because I collect and sell Canadian/NFLD coins and immersed myself in the Sheldon culture. As a footnote, I snipped a few coins out of their ICCS flips and they went to ANACS and came back 10 points higher.

This really means nothing to collectors of higher grade Canadian coins. Buyers already know that ICG and ANACS tend to overgrade coins relative to ICCS and CCCS standards... PCGS is a bit stricter, but it really depends on the series...

I don't touch any British grading companies as they don't have the international recognition. I didn't think ANACS were over-grading in general terms as other world coins I sent came back about right, or lower than expected. The NFLD and Can were quite a bit higher than ICCS as I said. When I said ANACS came back, my coins have been sitting in their offices for over two weeks without being shipped because I live in a foreign country. Pathetic.

While I can't see any wear in your scans, the minor rim nick at 9:00 of the obverse, and a couple of those blue spots on the obverse are leading me to believe it won't grade UNC. I'll go with AU-55. However, I think that this would be easier to grade in hand, due to the weak strike.