1918-D FB Mercury Dime. Grade

Heck, I'll be an outlier. 66fsb. Unless of course it is cleaned, which I can't tell either way.

I have a question..

Why are you insisting on grading coins that honestly to me aren't worth grading? Is it the slab, or you just like graded coins? Pretty much the last few you sent in for grading I would have passed on each one.

hfjacinto....this particular coin was one of first I got. In-hand it is much nicer. It was a toss up. Yes...you nailed it. If you look at my blabbing in last couple years, I noted I wanted to build a slabbed coin collection. I like slabbed coins. Received a cool reception. Now I know why. But I wanted to see how the first batch goes. It was way below expectations. I still have more that did not go the way I thought. I see you looked at a few. I still have ERROR coins PCGS is grading. That ought to be exciting. Lol. So, I rolled the dice, but now see more clearly what I am dealing with in professional coin grading.

But here ya go hfjacinto....one main thing I have learned, and should have in the last two years, is you CANNOT just look at other graded coins for comparisons, and assume "oh, mine must be that grade or close"! No. Because ANA standards take many things into consideration, and one is (as explained to me by a few folks here on CC), is each coin may be graded starting from a baseline that is based on that coins Strike, Mint, and a host of other criterea.

So a simiar past graded AU55 coin may look far worse than your AU55 graded coin (same type/year), because of grading criterea I knew nothing about. It also answers my question I have had for a long time of why do lower graded coins many times look way better than the higher graded coins? And visa versa. Same reasons.

It has changed my outlook already. Have to learn somehow. And this was a lesson and an eye opener. Sometimes we need to see for ourselves. CC has been proven right in most of the comments I have received. I readily admit that. So, I like slabs, but I am going to be far more discriminating in coin selection and grading candadites. That is a fact.

Yes...I write too much. Explain too much. It's just in my nature. I write as I think. Fast. And it just ends up as novels. Not a good thing here. People like to the point. I have gotten better. Working it. Just not this time. Haha.

But I am trying hard to really learn this craft in a compressed manner. It is tough really. But this one grading episode had brought some clarity, which at first I thought this is BS. Lol. I no longer think that. It was me. Not the grading. Though I do think a few were under graded. But again, based on how they look with no professional digging. So, that is good news to see where I missed it. I have zero problem admitting failure. Hell, I have a few more spectacular failures I am going to post. Haha It was just hard to understand how these coins I will post got what they got because in the flesh they were really nice IMO. But another lesson learned. It's a good thing.

I'm doing a slabbed IHC collection and from my experience most common coins are cheaper if you buy them already slabbed. For the keys RAW can make sense if you get them at a good price and slab them yourself.

In the end as long as your happy (which based on a few of your posts, you didn't seem happy with the grade) buy what you want. But based on the grades you got you might be happier with already slabbed coins. My 2 cents.