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 Replies: 8 / Views: 1,446 |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10034 Posts |
OK - I have time now for my coins. I have some older rolls of coins put away in the 60s-70s, including some bank rolls. I want to downsize volume for quality. I see slabbed MS coins can bring some decent premiums. I don't know if mine are MS or not. I was on Youtube and saw some PCGS grading seminars. And I thought they were saying an MS can have no wear. Yet on the pics of the coins in the MS grading section of the seminar - it looked like there were small spots of wear  How do I go about becoming educated to make valid observations and grade these things correctly? And I get little help from the PCGS grading pics online b/c they do not point out why the coins in the pics are the grade they assigned them. Help?  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4469 Posts |
I would recommend the book, The Art and Science of Grading Coins by Jason Poe, and you can buy it on Amazon for about $15. The books covers strike, wear, contact marks, eye appeal and luster. Once you understand how these elements interact you can grade a MS coin. You also need to be able to identify the high points of the series that you are grading, and you need to understand what circulation rub looks like so you can tell the difference between a AU58 and low MS. Once you get the basic down practice on the CCF coin forum. Once I had the grading down one thing that helped my a lot was submitting MS coins to NGC and PCGS for grading as I would grade the coin before submitting and once I got my coins back I would check how well I did and try to figure out why my grades were not the same. By submitting coins, I also got feedback on how well I was doing on my purchases on coins. Edited by Slider23
08/10/2015 11:10 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1314 Posts |
Generally speaking, my difficulties are not derived from having to learn the rules. They are openly published. My frustration is in learning "how it is really done". Per PCGS. "Mint State The term corresponding to the numerical grades MS-60 through MS-70, used to denote a business strike coin that never has been in circulation. A Mint State coin can range from one that is covered with marks (MS-60) to a flawless example (MS-70)." Yet when I inquired about "Counting Wheel" marks on MS TPG coins, I was told they were caused not at the mint, but at the casinos. Say What? Edited by Chute72
08/11/2015 02:17 am
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Rest in Peace
United States
18456 Posts |
To discuss this subject I'll try to make it as simple as possible.
MS (mint state) means the condition of a coin that was just struck at the mint. this coin will show full mint luster, no wear at all, and virtually no contact marks. now by the time this coin gets to it's final destination it shows bag marks, counting machine marks, misc. contact marks. and still NO WEAR. so the MS designation of 60-69 is determined by how many of these marks
are showing on this coin.
sorry for making this longer than I anticipated.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
I don't even try anymore. I've seen coins in slabs noted as MS-60 or something like that and the coin looked like it went through a war. Then too, I've seen coins in slabs and they were stated as AU-58 yet they appeared to be a high MS coin. For slabs you just have to remember that the companies that produce slabbed coins are full of people and people are people. They make errors. They do a lot of guessing. They could take out on a coin what happened at home last night. Or they could have just had to many Martinis at Lunch.
For me, I just buy a coin if I like it and really don't care what it was graded as.
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Bedrock of the Community
 United States
10034 Posts |
I thank people for their input here. But I still have a problem. The problem is in scenarios such as my having 5 bank rolls of beautiful looking 1966 nickels. These have been stored since 1966, and were put away by my grandfather when he got them from the bank that year. I already went through them looking for FS nickels (nope), but luster, strike, etc, are all great on these.
I would have to post 200 individual pics on here just to show each OBV, and I am sure no one would want to go looking through each and every one to let me know if there are some worthy of slabbing.
An MS 65 is 15.00 and MS is 125.00. I would hate to not know there is one more in these rolls. I can pick out the ones with little to no marks etc., but how to tell MS 64 from 66 is what I need to know.
Also have an ANCs book I have gone through describing strike, wear, showing high points etc.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6370 Posts |
In all likelihood, they are all BU. You just need to grade them based on the number of marks visible and whether or not they have Full Steps.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
604 Posts |
You can try to use the PCGS grading standards as a guide to grading your coins. Keep in mind though each series of coins are graded differently. The average number of marks for one coin may not be the same average for another. http://www.pcgs.com/grades |
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Rest in Peace
United States
18456 Posts |
Also try PCGS photograde.
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Replies: 8 / Views: 1,446 |
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Posted 08/11/2015 02:16 am
