1892 Philly Morgan

"A Fistful Of Dollars"
"For A Few Dollars More"

I only have them on VHS, so I really do want to get them on DVD! (I do have "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" on DVD.)
Also "Tombstone" and "The Long Riders", to replace my VHS tapes...

I have a couple of nice VF "CC" Morgans that actually circulated in the Old West days .

A local dealer has the two 1892 PCGS MS-64 Morgans (CC and Philly). Yours truly told him (in addition to the basics of this post): "This is one of the worst examples of overpricing because of the "CC" mintmark", and he said "The CC buyers don't look at the other mintage numbers".....

I don't understand the popularity of CC morgans either. They are very easy to sell, for whatever reason. That's what I like about them.

I better take my VF-20 1881-P out of my bolo tie, then....
Someone might think it's a "CC" because it's VF-20....

I see a lot of VG to VF Philly Morgans at the dealers (the dealer that I just bought the 1892-P from has dozens of Philly Morgans in that grade range), but yes AG Phillies would be huge conditional rarities (since they were the first to go into the melting pots in the late 1960's and 1980!).

And yes I have had a VF-20 1892-P for a while now, as well...

As far as 'conditional rarity', well the PCGS MS-64 1892-P has 161 less population than its triple more expensive PCGS MS-64 1892-CC cousin! Methinks we have a 'sleeper' here, but even if it stays worth 1/3 of its "CC" cousin, it's still the rarer population coin.
If that was due to "CC"'s being cracked and resubmitted, that would be hilarious! "Oh, I'm sorry CC guys, you've made my Philly rarer than your CC, at least officially!"

Here is my opinion regarding the comparison of PCGS population reports. The fact of the matter is, the more valuable the coin, the more likely it is to be submitted for grading/authentication. So just because a coin is rare, it may actually have a higher population report than it's higher mintage counterpart, mostly because the increase in realized price will be larger with the rare coin than with the more common coin after submission. What is the PCGS population report on a 1942 F-12 Lincoln Cent? I'm willing to bet it's pretty low, probably much lower than the F-12 population of the 1909-s vdb.

Here's the thing, though. Mint State Morgans are pretty common, because so many were saved in Mint bags at the Treasury. However, being in bags, they tended to get baggy, i.e., scratched and marked up. MS63 is easy for almost any Morgan, and MS64 not difficult. MS65 and above, though....it's very difficult for a big, heavy Morgan to avoid damage in a bag.

Darn few (comparatively) survived in Gem condition. Let's take a hypothetical Morgan where the true real-world populations are like (pulling numbers out of my head) 10,000 existing in MS63, 5,000 in 64, 1000 in 65 and 30 in MS66 with none finer. That coin might be worth $100 in 63, $200 in 64 and $1000 in 65. 66's would command 5-figure prices.

There's no incentive to resubmit a 63. They're too common, and too obvious, and 64's aren't that great a step in price. However, you can assume that the Pops in 64 and 65 will be overstated by as much as 50% (or more), because of the great incentive to "make" a higher grade. With a $200 coin in-hand, I would certainly take the $25 risk to make it a $1000 coin, especially if it was nice for the grade and I only had $100 in the coin, as a dealer might. Risking that $25 on a $1000 coin to possibly make a $10,000 coin is a no-brainer. Even the few 66's are subject to cracking, if the coin is nice enough.

When you add in the "cachet" of a CC Morgan (and there is obviously a subjective preference for them), you can assume that any CC Morgan population in 64 or above is greatly overstated.

Ah, the joys of 'crackouts'!

A number of people would crack and resubmit the MS-64 1892-P as well, for the reasons SuperDave outlined. It's worth about 5× as much in MS65.

I do indeed believe that MS-64+ CC Morgans are cracked and resent more than any other Mint's MS-64+ Morgans (in general).

I would even lean towards that the 1892-CC is rarer than the 1892-P in true population, but maybe not as much rarer as everyone thinks. CC's were the most likely of any Mints to be saved and collected over the decades. The CC's were also the least likely to have been melted in the 1960's and 1980, due to their numismatic value even then. Some of the melters would have melted any Morgan from Philly and saved any CC Morgan.... (and the GSA sales in the 1970's greatly increased the total population of CC Morgans in public hands!)

The 'population inflation' has some ironic side effects, such as anyone can put an MS-64 1892-P on ebay, and claim it to be "lower mintage and lower population" than the MS-64 1892-CC! (and be 100% technically correct!)

(and that might explain why 1892-P owners won't want to crack out their coins!)

DNA - love that 2-DVD set. !!