Question About Medallic Orientation Of Mexico Iturbide Coins

Never checked my pieces that closely, but I guess there's no reason they shouldn't be - the immediately preceding Colonial coinage was all medal alignment, as was some of the following Cap & Rays (early on).

A 45 is kind of a wow, yes? Soft strike aside (which seems to be normal on this 4E), it looks about VF30 details-wise, MAYBE 35 if generous? In looking at the two examples I see in Ponterio archives, that would seem about reasonable... And in terms of "details", were you thinking lt. clean?

Either way, very rare piece.

That's where grading is not perfect for everyone - the way the coin was striked is not taken into account (and that's correct, a weakly striked coin uncirculated still is uncirculated)

If it's not cleaned in hand, then it was correct for the coin to grade problem-free, as adjustment marks (if properly recognized) wouldn't affect the technical grade in the circulated range.

The denticles do present as nice and bold, though in looking at the other examples I can find online, that appears to be a feature of this issue in general. Looks like the they were struck on rather large flans relative to the diameter of the design. Here some others for comparison:

http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/...ctID=1978005
http://www.coinfactswiki.com/wiki/M..._JM_4_scudos
(not noted, but the above piece was NGC40)
http://coins.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleN...&lotNo=21712
http://stacksbowers.com/auctions/Au...LotID=109101
http://stacksbowers.com/Auctions/Au...?LotID=26302
http://stacksbowers.com/auctions/Au...?LotID=95532
http://www.coinarchives.com/w/lotvi...fccdc56811e8

That last piece is about the best there... the only one that shows any hair detail on the crown of the head (looks like a combo of slightly better strike and slightly less wear than the others shown).





In terms of whether it gets taken into account in grading, that logic IS true when dealing with circulated pieces, but not really for Uncirculated specimens... "UNC" or "MS" always gets specified further via word descriptive (either just "UNC", "BU", "Gem BU", or something similar), or through the 60 to 70 numbering system. A coin with as-struck flaws such as moderate adjustment marks, weak strike, planchet flaws such as laminations or crude rims TECHNICALLY (at least in theory) should have an upper limit in terms of how high a number grade it can possibly achieve. So, a coin with XF40 detail in terms of wear but with a soft strike and some as-made planchet flaws SHOULD technically grade as XF40 (though of course you could verbally qualify that). However, a similarly-struck coin with no wear should in theory be capped at a top MS grade of 63 or 64, no matter how few surface marks may be present... whereas another example with the same amount of surface marks/same luster may be able to grade 65 or 66.

Again, though, "SHOULD" and "IN THEORY" are key terms there.