Please Grade This 1921-S Morgan

I'll say VF-35 with an extremely weak strike. Unusual looking Morgan.

What a very odd Morgan. The level of wear on the cotton Bolls suggest a minimum grade of EF45 maybe AU50. The late die state indicated by the metal flow wear from the date digits to the rim, much like the Bust Half series, one would expect many die cracks, but there appears to be none.

I agree. It is a very strange-looking the way it is worn. I've had this since the early nineties in my dansco album and finally took it out today to look at it under a microscope closely for the first time.

I too was kind of baffled at the wear pattern across the coin. When I bought it from Ramapo in the 90s, they called it BU, but you can see that it's definitely not. IIRC, I challenged them on it, but for $14, decided to eat it and keep it. BTW, it weighs exactly 23.76 g, so I don't think it is fake.

EDIT: 23.786g. My bad on the typo

I think it's a fake. Look at the expression of the Eagles face and the wear is uneven and just looks plain wrong.....looks like a cheap Chinese knockoff.

Details all look right - the coin seems genuine something just went horribly wrong with the strike. Not uncommon for the 1921-S it is one of the worst struck Morgans overall; lots of ugly examples out there. Very unlikely to be a counterfeit since weight is correct and this is not a particularly rare coin in the apparent grade.

Unless that's a typo, that's almost 3 whole grams light, which cannot be accounted for by the modest apparent wear. On that basis alone I'd say counterfeit, even though why anybody'd be reproducing this particular issue is beyond me.




I also noticed that, but I wasn't in "fake detction" mode for the likes of a 1921-S. Now I think I was dismissing an obvious cue.