1870-CC Half Dollar For Your Grading Pleasure

No it's not at all. As I've said several times we cannot see the luster, you don't grade coins by just counting marks.

That said we are talking about an actual rarity and a 6 figure minimum coin. There are 4 PCGS examples graded MS, yes only 4 and this one is the top pop by 2 grades as 1 is graded 62 and 2 61. This level of the market operates on it's own and yes other factors come into play and there is nothing wrong with that. The spread between the second highest graded matters likely more than the grade itself as one example.

This is nothing to do with a good old boys network and everything to do with the fact this is a 6 figure coin already and grades and spreads can easily mean 100s of 1000s of dollars at that level.

PCGS is by far preferred at that level for a reason, they know what they are doing and why they are assigning the grades they are

thanks for the research BH1964. there is a fairly high difference in the photos from the auction. a slightly weaker strike and luster appear to me to be the reason for the grade. I still have this coin at MS65 but I'm sure when PCGS was grading this coin due to its rarity they probably had their best graders on this one and didn't put that grade on it with just a quick review

Absolutely. The top guys get all the big money coins that everyone would love to be paid to grade.




It's honest. That's what it looks like under the lighting used. There's a lot of different ways to photograph coins, you can emphasize marks or color or luster etc. The submitters can have some say on the TrueView if they give notes or request certain styles and things like that as they generally have several different style shots especially on coins like that. In this case the emphasis was put on the subtle colors