Sel's comment is more in line with countermarked coins, where significant details from the original coin survive. Australian holey dollars, for example, are typically given two grades, one for the host dollar, and one for the counterstamp.
For overstruck coins such as Australian "dumps", where the undertype is either completely obliterated or only tiny remnants remain, then the grade of the undertype is largely irrelevant; much of the "wear" on the undertype would have actually been caused by the overstriking process. In such cases, only the wear on the overstrike is used to determine the grade.
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Since it has never been uncirculated, and probably never more than an F from the beginning, is there any way to grade it?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. This coin was indeed uncirculated, not just once but twice - in its original incarnation as an emergency daler, then again as an overstruck ore. As I understand it, every single example of this type of coin was overstruck on old emergency dalers.
Now, it may not have "looked" very uncirculated, since the overstriking was particularly weak on this piece. But weak strike does not affect technical grade. I'll be the first to admit I have difficulty telling the difference between "weak strike" and "wear" on a worn coin, and usually if I can't tell the difference I'll simply dismiss any "missing detail" as wear, and grade it accordingly.
In this case, there are significant details missing from the crowns, on both sides. The missing bits are rather uniformly spread across the design, so I'd tend to class it as wear, rather than weak strike (which on overstruck coins is typically patchy). I'd grade it Fine (American VF).
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Posted 02/08/2013 5:19 pm
