1880-O Morgan. Grade? (Practice)

Coinfrog, you are usually right. Be easier on yourself.

Alright, it's breakdown time!




Yeah, I'd agree with that. Though technically if I crack a BU roll, and buy something from a friend and toss his a quarter from the roll technically it has been circulated. However, the reason I'm not a fan on the AU tag is one I'll elaborate on shortly.




The ten levels of mint state were created to originally grade morgan and Peace dollars actually, but were quickly applied to all US coins. Essentially it worked like this originally. You had MS60, the worst possible a coin can be without any signs of wear or significant mishandling. MS65 a coin free of detracting marks with no signs of wear or mishandling. MS70, a perfect coin. The reason I don't like AU is that it stands for about uncicrculated. I would much prefer the term AM (about mint). I feel this describes the grade MUCH better. When you have to explain the difference between an AU58 and MS60 and you try to use the terms "mishandled unc" or such it just gets too confusing for people who don't have a few years grading experience under their belt. AM describes it better IMO. It is in about mint condition, however shows signs of wear and mishandling to a degree reflective of its numerical grade. The way I always explain it is that a coin can be circulated and still be mint state, but a coin with wear cannot be MS. The dividing line occurs when their is wear on the devices. I don't care if the coin has changed pockets a few times, as long as it hasn't worn, in my eyes, and in technical terms, it's still UNC (MS). The other thing is mishandling, especially on gold will quickly drop a coin from MS to AU. Simply put if you never circulated a coin but left it in your pocket for a few weeks when you went out and about, very quickly it'd be AU. Simply because the mishandling caused friction which in turn causes wear.




Not sure what you were trying to say (maybe cause it's 4AM) but, I think what you're saying is that in your opinion an AU coin is a coin with minimal amounts of wear, right? Your wording was a bit confusing.




Alright, so I'm gonna break this into a few parts to address this better.




So. Ok. The fact that the strikes are substandard is taken into consideration, and you can have some disgusting, atrocious strikes and still have a MS coin. That's all taken into consideration, and well seasoned graders know the difference between strike weakness and wear. The part where it gets tricky is your usage of "circulation evidence" as it can mean things to different people. Generally circulation evidence is a combination of luster impairment and wear. For example, if I'm quite suspicious that a coin may be AU but has strike weakness and blistering luster, I'm gonna bet that it's MS. That is because by definition an MS coin can have luster impairment, but no wear. An AU coin can have luster impairment and wear. So. To recap. It is taken into consideration, but wear isn't excusable, and circulation evidence is more or less equal to someone saying wear.




We're getting to the bottom of your confusion! A MS coin can NEVER have wear as it would be a contradiction to it's own name. Logic states a worn item isn't in its state, that rule follows to coins as well. To break down the 10 levels of MS MS that's gonna be a challenge, but here goes the theory.

Coins, in this case Morgan dollars are made of hard metal, in this case 90%, 10% copper. In order to make the blanks strikeable you need to make them slightly malleable. Once you've done so (I'm skipping over some stuff, but just generally understand you make them malleable) they are struck. The next part needs some understanding of thermodynamics, but when coins are struck it's under immense pressure which creates a ton of heat. Because of that coins fresh of the press are actually quite prone to damage because of how soft their surfaces are and because they can be easily blemished while malleable. Most bag marks and nicks and such you see on Morgan dollars are from when the surfaces were so soft.

Now why is that all important? We use the 10 levels of MS to describe how a coin that has not experienced any wear, any circulation, nothing a Mint State coin has faired from striking to bagging. The each of the MS grades describes the number and severity of any flaws gained during this period. Because when we do this, we are describing a MS coin, no wear is allowable. So basically whenever you go up a grade you go down X amount of marks until you hit MS70 (perfect) or go down and hit MS60 (worst possible without having any wear or anything that would detail it). The reason we need 10 is to describe the different number and severity of marks.




Change your settings to that I can send you an email thru CCF and I'll send you the link to a 2hr long lecture on grading hosted by the ANA earlier this week.

As for the Kennedy I just think they dropped the ball, PCGS isn't great for Moderns, that's more NGC's speed. Regardless it looks like a SP66CAM to me.

Well that's all from me. It is now 4:30am and I'm going to bed.

No way this is a Mint State coin. No real luster, it has a washed out look, like the obverse has been thumb rubbed. The obv and rev fields have a scuffed-up look to them indicating brief circulation. Nice AU probably 55.