1883-O Morgan Nci

Hi Becky

I actually do not collect Morgans, I just had a hard time walking by these ones,,

and these will more than likely come for sale or trade in the near future !!

I will see if I can get some decent pics of the die crack, it is really a pretty good one !!

Rick

MS64. There are couple of areas on the obverse where it looks like the luster might be slightly broken which would keep it from MS65 in my opinion. Very nice strike for a New Orleans.

Both the 83-O and the 84-O are listed in the coins forsale forum ,,

Im accepting offers !!

Rick

quote:

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Originally posted by stk54dist

I'm one of the new guys to this forum. What does GSA mean in a coin's description?

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General Services Administration, the US government's bean counters. Without my looking it up for exact details, suffice it to state that the huge surplus of Morgan silver dollars stored away in the Mint's bowels were a burden on the taxpayer, so GSA decided to get rid of them. They released them for sale three times. The first time, they almost gave them away at fire sale prices. GSA couldn't sell them fast enough. Somebody got smart (most unusual in government) and decided maybe the govt could be making a little money, so they encapsulated them in special labelled GSA plastic holders and sold them for more (but not near their true collector values) in two subsequent sales. There's now millions of GSA Morgans kicking around. Some are common (1884-CC, 1885-CC) while others are not so common or rare.

Problem: the third party grading companies like to crack them out of the GSA slabs and put them in their own plastic. NGC is the only exception and wraps a seal with the coin's grade around the original GSA slab. The rest of the TPGs simply label them "GSA" or "GSA Hoard" in their own proprietary holders.

While the GSA label neither adds nor detracts value from most Morgans (there's some disagreement and some exceptions), it does add a provenance to the coin. Also, in my estimation (FWIW), as more Morgans are cracked out of their original slabs to be graded by TPGs, there will someday reach a point when Morgans still in their original GSA slabs may have enhanced value.