Post A Slabbed Coin In MS 63 And Lets Compare Them....

how do I stop a thread? My thread?

My point being..... while the appearance of a "weak strike" is noted by almost everyone as far as New Orleans struck Morgans, this is not the case..... the New Orleans Morgans were struck with greater strike pressure than at any of the other mints.... the dies were correctly spaced, but the design did not come up fully, yet overall serviceable die life was less.... what was the reason for all of that, and does it affect grading today? I'll not answer that.... continue with the "class".... I won't visit again.

I got your PM Mike.... as you wish, and since this is your thread, here is the way I see this grading thing.... (but please do not refer to me as an "expert" of any kind...I am not).


A lot of smaller towns across the USA were planned well over 100 years ago..... while all of these towns were designed for future growth, they did not enjoy the same degree of vision for expansion...... the result is that many a town is now saddled with a poor street layout, hindering further growth in certain areas...... Liken this to the planning of the US Mint in New Orleans.

The establishment of the New Orleans mint was authorized in 1835 and construction began later the same year.... The original purpose of the new mint was to assist the Philadelphia mint in the striking of gold coins..... By the time that the mint was completed in 1838, it was now tapped to strike silver coinage as well..... When the Morgan dollar came into being, the N.O. mint was required to help strike coins in amounts unplanned for during facility construction.

This mint did not possess the annealing capability to make this huge Morgan dollar quota...... planchets were run through the furnace far too quickly in effort to keep pace with production schedule...... the result was hard planchets...... enough of them, but too hard for the design to be brought up effectively....... efforts to compensate for this culminated in increased strike pressure...... increased strike pressure on a harder planchet resulted in die wear at an increased rate..... this was a juggling act between hard planchets, increased strike pressure, premature die wear and below par design transfer.

Now consider the design..... the eagle is neither symmetrical or centered on the die, and neither is the head of Liberty..... look at a clash overlay.... if it is not immediately obvious that when the high points of the dies, (which just happens to be the die fields), come in closest proximity, the planchet is displaced by compression between those fields to the devices (and toward the rim)..... in areas where only one field is compressing directly against the device on the opposing die, the filling effect will be greater than in an area where two devices oppose each other..... (don't expect both legs or talons to fill at the same rate unless you know these devices to be of equal depth on the reverse die, and are equal in opposing the field or devices of equal depths on the opposing die)...... variable depth of device engraving is what gives the look you enjoy on these coins.... imagine what they would look like if all devices were of equal depth.

(Especially on an O mint coin), should rotation be a grading factor? I certainly think so, as areas of displacement may vary..... Is it so obvious (from online photos) as to whether a coin is either "weakly struck" or just worn? I might think that even with coin in hand to tilt and and flip, loupe and light, this may be a very difficult task without the years of experience that you all have... I say that while there is definitely no replacement for experience, don't lull yourselves into viewing it as the ultimate trump card.

No, and I did not mean to imply that..... I do not recall the year off hand, but when the the mint sent the engineer to N.O. to determine why the dies were wearing out so fast down there, he made the observance of improper planchet annealing, so N.O. slowed down and annealed the planchets correctly and the coins had good strikes, when he left, the process was again sped up and the coins suffered for it.... I might imagine that this occurred every time an envoy from Philadelphia came to visit.... Does not your workplace do 'things right' when the corporate bosses or their inspection teams come to visit? When they are gone, it is back to doing things the way you normally do.

How ever...let's get this thread BACK ON TRACK...lets post. any YEAR
from graded accepted TPG's for MS 63 so we can LEARN from there grading...AM I beating a dead horse? or stick to the topic....
post some MS 63's from accepted TPG's....

There doesn't need to be anyone in a live discussion for you to post, if you post something when there is no one on the forum , when we do come back on the forum we will see your post and we will answer it at that time and then when you get back on the forum you can read the responses to your question


I already posted all the 63's in my collection. They are all 78's because that is the only date that I do not care about grade. All the other coins in my collection that aren't 1878 Morgans are graded MS-64 through MS-68

I'm going to drag this slightly off topic, but not really. Go here:

https://goccf.com/t/78480