Seated Dollar: MS Or AU

No I'm not. It was sold by Stacks in one of the Baltimore auctions with MUCH better pictures

I now think it's MS after looking at it more closely. Baseball, I'll be interested to see those pics once Mike reveals the grade.

XF Details - Improperly Cleaned.

@ Baseball, I sent you a private message yesterday. If you already have prior knowledge of the grade, the best course of action would probably be to recuse yourself from commenting. We learn from our mistakes and the point of this post was to educate members. Often times strike issues that occur within certain coin series on specific years leads us to incorrect grading conclusions.

No one is hiding information or photos. I picked up a 72 recently that suffered from these same strike issue. This coin came up for auction at GC and I thought is was a perfect example to illustrate those issues and created the poll. I didn't shop around to see if there were any other photos. Also GC's pics are a more accurate representation of what a coin looks like. Stacks doctors their photos and they are very good at it. I purchased a 59-O sld from stacks awhile back that was graded au-50. I posted it in the grading section using their photos and folks were calling it an MS coin. When I got the coin in hand, I came to the conclusion that YES: stacks doctors their pics. It's still a beautiful coin but stacks uses lighting and editing to cover up rub and weak strikes.

Here are the stacks photos of this coin:


Edit: GC's pics for comparison

Well, this pic doesn't alter my original grade: weak strike cleaned AU.

Gettin' itchy here, but this is a great discussion.

basebal21 - Tell us more why you disagree.

I think its clearly a circulated coin from either set of pictures. Stacks just used proper lighting for a low contrast coin and GC did not. I learned from experience that good coin photography is less about having a expensive rig and more about understanding proper lighting conditions for different coin types. Low contrast coins should be photographed with a single light overhead. Multiple lights at different angles are good for very lustrous coins, but are inappropriate for a low contrast coin like this one. That is probably what GC did and as a result they washed it out.

In any event, this is a coin I would avoid no matter what the grade or price. Weak strike, cleaned and problems. This is why I like working with my favorite dealers. They know me and my interests and help me get good stuff. Don't get me wrong, I have bought quite a bit from auction but if you compare the material I got through a good dealer vs. auction, the dealer stuff is much better. Plus I can return it if I don't like it.