Please Grade This 1898 Morgan Dollar

Agreed on the bolded. I have a slabbed NGC MS65 that blows this one out of the water.

That being said, it does have a decent cartwheel luster, and yes, my photography skills aren't exactly the greatest. Gotta be extra careful these days with China practically counterfeiting everything under the sun!

I agree that it's definitely not a 66, but I'd say its a solid 64.. And I can see hints of luster in the photos, no overly obvious signs of dipping, and if you say your photo skills are a bit less than par (like mine ) then I see no reason to think it may have been cleaned. As long as you got it for a decent price I'd say she looks just fine.

Send it to SEGS. They are an underrated grading company with cool holders that is incredibly cheap. So, you won't have a loss if it turns out to just be a 63. The standard grading is only 15 bucks!

SEGS is a fine company, but ANACS is probably more on the mark with Morgans, dollars these days. PCGS is the grading gold standard for getting the most out of resale.

I'd grade this particular coin MS63 and not worth sending it in to any TPG truth be told. Looks overdipped and weakly struck, no way it's going to go any higher than a MS64 on a good day, and would probably get a details grade for cleaning. You will pay in fees all your profit margin (if you have any left at MS63 grade - cleaned) just to slab the coin. I only send in to PCGS when I have at least a fair chance to make $200.00 or more on a coin. ANACS is used more often because I'm usually working on a profit margin a lot lower than $200.00.

Not to discourage you, but go to a coin show and look, don't buy - yet. See a lot of different Morgans in various TPG slabs at different grades, find a dealer to learn a bit about grading. You'd be surprised how many people don't even ask or take time to learn grading and just take a dealers or 'investment guy's" word on the grade, purchase a coin or two and get buried deep in common silver dollars at inflated grades and prices.

Trust PCGS, ANACS and NGC to at least give you a fair grade on the holder (90% of the time anyways), after all grading is very subjective and subject to change over time (in the TPGs).

If this hobby is something you plan on spending some time and money on, go to an ANA grading course, learn all you can before blindly buying up willy nilly at a show or from a local coin shop. I've been collecting for over 35 years now and was a full time coin dealer for almost 8 years. I've taken more than 5 grading courses and several Counterfeit Detection courses at ANA Summer seminars or ANA shows, and I still learn something new every time. I certainly don't consider myself an expert grader, but I'm a dang sight better than a lot of dealers I run into, IMO. Find an honest dealer that will take time with you and help you understand the coins you are seeking. Learn all you can, don't get discouraged, have thick skin, and be prepared to loose some money once in awhile, it happens. Eventually you will figure out what to buy vs. what not to buy and what to run away from!

Here is one of my recent MS66 Morgans I sold.



Go tsign up for free at Heritage Auctions and browse their site to see some amazing photos of high end Morgans and other coins. A great self-learning tool!
www.ha.com

Thanks for not getting discouraged! That is why we are all here to learn from the general knowledge base. Each one of us (even the newbies) can teach someone else here at CCF something along this great collecting highway.

You didn't loose much on the coin, and I'd save it in a holder and refer back to it as time goes by, label what you paid for it, and when you bought it. It will be a great reminder in future to not jump the gun on a particular coin.

There are almost always other, better coins out there (unless you are dealing with errors, unique pieces or condition census coins), a lesson I had to learn by loosing a bunch of money to learn myself a long time ago. Sometimes I still jump the gun and end up with a coin I'm not entirely happy with, yes even after years of collecting and dealing with them.

A good lesson is to also put on the holder the price of what a truly accurate graded MS66 would have cost at the time and when you refer back to it occasionally - you'll see how much you would have made in profit if you had indeed bought the MS66 at the time.

Now I always try to buy quality over quantity. I'll save up for awhile for a better coin that I want, See this post where I found a spur of the moment purchase I was about to jump on, and thankfully did not. Now am saving to get one in a F12-VF25 grade, yes it will cost 20-50 times more money, but in the long run how much more profit will it be worth than the one I was originally going to get on the cheap? And how much more will I appreciate a really nice problem free example? A lot more I guarntee you that.

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