1881 S Morgan Debate .. Cleaned Or Not?

There are ways to tell. A coin that has been cleaned or dipped for that matter can be picked out of the crowd if you have a decent stereo microscope. The deeper valleys and crevices should reveal some sort of residue or build up or lack of the dip.

Typically if it is dipped it may show some luster, but I think that cartwheel effect would go away. If the coin was whizzed, A scope would show those pesky semi-circle scratches.

But - all of this matters naught if the "opinion" that it was cleaned us from an untrained eye. As others will chime in, there are many ways to clean a coin, and SOME not all, are recognized by a TPG. If your unsure if it is or isn't and want to lay the issue to rest, grab a total of 5 coins and mail them off to your favorite TPG company and see what it comes back as. I think ANACS runs specials all the time, and even has a $10.00 per coin grading fee.

I personally think straight on pictures are FAR better to post than angled pictures. Straight on pics allow the camera to remain focused across the coin and it offers the same across the board view of any coin in question.

"Not worthy of grading" was not the OP's question. Neither coin would be worth the cost to get slabbed by a TPG but both appear MS 63 with no surface issues. For what they are and the price price paid for them, he chose 2 good coins.

i was responding to the prior poster who suggested grading options.

The '81-S is a MS63 that would be bagged for a cleaning (hairlines on obverse, second pic shows them nicely) and the '87 looks like a MS61. Anything more than $25 each would be pretty rough, imho.

Wow, I didn't intend any offense. Merely pointing out some issues with the coins (in particular the '81-S) that you should watch for in the future. At $33.33, this wasn't a horrible deal (I've blown way more on way worse coins), but you certainly didn't get the better of the seller. For an extra $20, you could have picked up a graded MS63... and I still think you may want to pick a 63, a 64, and a 65 up, all graded by PCGS and all the same date ('80-S, '81-S are good options), so you can understand what a problem-free mint-state coin looks like.

It's something I advise anybody who is interested in collecting MS specimens of Morgan dollars do. You can buy a common-date 63, 64 and 65 for no more than $250-$275 all in and it will teach you a lot about properly grading and valuing the coins you're interested in owning. Take it with you when you go shopping for coins, pull it out and compare. Properly rotate the coin under strong light and look at it from sharp angles to attempt to pick up hairlines. Using proper viewing technique and having a solid knowledge base will really cut down on not only the amount of money you waste on problem coins, but the amount of time it takes you to identify them.