1896 Morgan

Very Nice - I like the toning
MS-60 as well

Thank you everyone.

amac44 - That is a close as my camera shoots. I could crop to the date, but it wouldn't be any closer than what you are already seeing. If you tell me what you are trying to see, maybe I could shoot at a different angle or under different lighting to accentuate.

I think this is well above a MS60 coin honestly. I think your pictures are actually too nice in a way. Cameras can be absolutely brutal to coins. Especially when they are well taken. I think all of the marks on the cheek are breaks and not bag marks per se, and I dont't see any huge contact marks on the obverse. A little bit of chatter here and there. It looks like the date got the worst of everything. On the reverse, looks like great fields. Maybe a die crack running at the top of STATES. I also see what appears to be a clash mark in the left field at the base of the wing....Maybe from the leaves in the head? Hmmm, not sure.

My guess would be an easy MS63. I could be way off, but I think your camera isn't doing this coin justice.

Tights-I am so glad you said what you did. It seems every time I take a picture, I look at it and think...."God...it looks awful. The coin looks so much better in person." Finally, I just figured that the camera doesn't lie, but from what you are saying, it appears it may exaggerate.

Until yesterday, when I was learning a little about VAMs, I had never heard the term "clash marks" before. So I may not be completely clear on it, but from what I have read I have concluded 2 things and please correct me if I am wrong.

-That they would represent the part of the image directly beneath it on the other side of the coin.
-And that they are incuse on the die, therefore relief on the coin. If I have this right, I think the feature in the left field would not be a clash mark. It is extremely shallow but appears incuse and directly opposite is her hair rather than the leaves.

It almost seems like a clash mark is to a coin, what offset is to a note. Or am I all wet?

Thanks again, you are always a huge help!

Doug

Tights- I didn't use the pictures to determine what would be on the other side, I actually looked at the coin to eliminate all of the reversing/rotating confusion. But this time I did it a little more scientifically and hope I got it right. This time what I came up with is that opposite the mark is Liberty's eye, but the mark still doesn't match up with anything. I took the pic into Photoshop and made a 3-frame animation.

Frame 1: The reverse of the coin showing the mark.
Frame 2: I outlined the mark in red.
Frame 3: Keeping the red outline visible, I superimposed the obverse on the proper orientation to represent what you would see if you you could make the reverse invisible to see the obverse and this is the result:



Here are the 3 static frames separately to examine:




Tell me if I have everything positioned right. The rotation should be about dead-on as, when I photographed the coin, it was in a 2x2 that I slid into a positioning jig that will only allow rotations of 90 degrees.

It is tempting to think that it might match up with a similar angle in the eye but if you look, the mark is about a perfect right angle of 2 fairly straight lines whereas the similar angle in the eye is slightly acute with one of its legs having a slight curve. Plus, there is no way to rotate the coin to make this match up:



Am I misunderstanding something? I feel comfortable with the physics of this concept, but my limited knowledge of the minting process leaves me open to any suggestion that I may be applying it incorrectly or incompletely.

hadleydog Thanks. That is valuable and interesting information.