Guess ANACS's Grade

assuming the wheel mark was real, 67 details grade 65 .

I still think this is a beautiful coin !!

Rick

Where is the counting maching mark? I can't find it. Pretty coin. I would guess MS 65, but since I don't even see the wheel mark, my grade isn't worth much Anxious to hear the answer and commentary.
Don

MS60 DETAILS
1938 50C 2804799
COUNTING WHEEL DAMAGE.

There are no marks near Miss L's head. If you hold the coin at a certain angle under a lamp, you can see it. It doesn't interrupt the luster. I found it after many days looking at it. I took it to Stacks and the man there could't find it.

The wheel mark is a whisper thin contact mark by a rubber wheel on a counting machine. You can't really see it without rotating the coin around for awhile, and then, when you look away, you can't find it. I think it may appear in the lower left quadrant. If that's where it is, the photo is misleading: the rays are sharp coin in hand. I think the degenerate appearance of the rays in the photo must be due to it's angle.

NOTE: I edited this because I've been looking at where I thought the mark was and now I can't find it. It doesn't appear to be anywhere around Miss L.'s head, which is pretty clear and sharp in hand as in the photo.

I didn't think you sounded snippy at all. The coin has the eye appeal of an MS64/65 coin. Technical grading can be heartless. It's a beautiful coin, though, and that's what matters.

Stephen

I think you got ripped on the grade !!

By the way !! why did PCGS BB the coin ? was it just due to the wheel mark ?

Rick

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There are no marks near Miss L's head.

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In my post, I actually meant there appeared to be a mark above Miss Liberty's HAND not head. In other words, a mark right on her stomach.

From you later post, though, I guess you do not think that is where the wheel mark is located. Too bad the guy at Stack's missed it -- would have save you some grading fees.

Well, like you said, you learned a lot from this experience, and the cost was not terribly high!

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That coin is a beauty ,, but in my opinion whoever sold it to you as a 67 needs to live up to it !! Or they would not get another dollar of my Business !!!

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Well, even the original bottom-feeder slab said "obverse wheel mark" on it (see original post to this thread), so it was a bit of a gamble to hope that PCGS or ANACS would not flag it also.

Wierd science.
I was just agreeing with you that I was on notice that this coin had an "obverse wheel mark," but I didn't know this was fatal. In fact, I thought it might be a good thing like some of the other errors that some numismatists enjoy.

It seems, however, to be a sort of bright line rule. The PCGS Official Guide to Coin Grading and Counterfeit Detection says, in more than one place, that marks on a coin with great eye-appeal won't necessarily lower the grade. The mark on my coin is invisible. So it must be a standard, and from what I can tell, it's meaningless because the mark is so hard to find, much less does it distract from the eye-appeal. So I must conclude that PCGS et al. are systematically cornering and manipulating the "population" by undergrading. Is that cynical or what?

By the way, I forgot to answer your question: Stacks didn't send it in for me. They told me they don't do submissions normally. So I joined the Collector's Club ($50) and sent in my coin ($71.80). Stacks urged me to crack the slab and send it because they thought the designation was a mistake. Nobody could find this mysterious mark. In fact, after PCGS body bagged it, they told me to try NGC (another $30 or so to join ANA and become eligible for submissions). I didn't do that because now I knew that something called a wheel mark is, in fact, on the coin. Somewhere.