1936 Walking Liberty Half Dollar For Grading.

EF-40 details, cleaned

Adam - Can you show the coin in different lighting?

These are seller photos, I will shoot the coin when I get it. I have a suspicion this one has an old cleaning, and paid appropriately.

au details cleaned

I got it for a bit over $7. Melt is $5.50. It's replacing a rough, beat-up cleaned coin with almost no obverse rims, a partial date, and two massive rim hits. I didn't cherrypick this coin or select it for its outstanding qualities, I chose it because it was cheap and it was there. If I wanted to make a serious run at having a "really nice" set of Walkers I'd select for quality, but that's not a goal for now; I'm happy just to have a complete set.

(The keys and semi-keys were expensive enough -- I DID pick those for quality, they are all problem-free raw except the 21/21D are NGC G4-G6 slabbed.)

In the old days I would go to a LCS and pick through a large selection of coins such as this, in trays or books, and find the ones with the best eye appeal and least problems, but the last surviving LCS near me (relatively speaking -- it's 26 miles) is now 85% bullion/bulk junk silver and 15% high end investor-grade stuff in PCGS/NGC slabs. Even the trays of Morgans and Peace dollars I used to pick through are gone. So the occasional " ebay guesswork/photo gambling" is what's left, and I only do that if I know it's not going to cost me much to "miss" badly on a coin.

I know a lot of "advanced" collectors pooh-pooh this sort of collecting, wondering why not buy something much nicer, and those folks will wait patiently for months or years to fill each hole with just the right coin, creating beautiful sets with matched toning and uniformity in grade, but I'm not rich and I'm not getting any younger, and I don't personally value waiting 5-10-20-30 years to finish a single album simply because it has to be full of "just-so" coins. I have nothing against people who build sets that way (except a lingering bit of jealousy!) but it's not for me in this case.

paralyse - three cheers!

Got in hand. It has light and scattered hairlines across the fields indicative of light circulation, but it's definitely been dipped at some point in the past because the luster is all over the place instead of cartwheeling like it should. It'll do until something nicer comes along with less issues -- sharpness is AU55/AU58, a shame someone had to dunk it.

My photos





The coin being replaced

AU and probably dipped but still a pleasing example especially for the price paid.