1887 Three-Cent Nickel PCGS OGH: Controversial (For The 20 People In The World Who Care)

PR 63

Edit to add variety: This is the weak overdate

Ha,I'm getting better at grading because I said to myself PR63 before reading the other comments.
John1

Not so fast... he will post the grade and it will be in an MS-67 holder

OK, the controversy:

Here's what NGC says about the 1887 three-cent nickel proof: "The non-overdated variety forms a minority of the 1887 three-cent proofs. Walter Breen noted that these were the first examples coined, as they were formerly found among the complete proof sets of that year, nearly all of which have since been broken up into certified singles. This issue is also notably more rare than the overdate, though the popularity of the latter has nearly evened-out their values. Gems are very scarce, cameo pieces almost non-collectable."

Here's what PCGS (which graded this coin) says about the 1887 three-cent nickel proof: "Apparently, all of the 1887 Three Cent Nickel dies were overdated from 1886. It is possible that dies dated 1886 were left over from production in 1886 then reused, but it could be possible that the engraver of the Proof dies started making the 1887 Proof dies with a simple mistake. Since the dies for each year's production were made at the end of the previous year, it is natural that the engraver could forget that he was producing dies for 1887 in 1886, and simply grab the old 1886 date punch. This appears to be the case for the multiple dies used to produce Proof Three-Cent Nickels for 1887. Once the mistake was realized, some effort was made to efface the error by grinding (or polishing) the dies, but based on the evidence of the coins themselves, this appears to be a hit-and-miss effort. What we have today are two different varieties known as the Strong Overdate and the Weak Overdate. True to their names, the Weak Overdate has barely visible remnants of an underlying 6 and the Strong Overdate has a rather sharp 6 underneath the 7. Collectors value these varieties differently and the Strong Overdate usually commands a premium over the Weak Overdate variety."

My LCS guy: "NGC is right. PCGS is full of horse hooey (he used a similar term). PCGS used to grade three varieties -- as you can see with this OGH holder -- now it only does two, but that's only to justify their pie & the sky theory. There's no hint of any overdate on this coin."

There's no question my LCS is guy is, in fact, a crotchety old fart. There's a Nixon/Agnew campaign poster on the wall of his shop, enshrined with 50-year-old plastic flowers.

But can you elaborate please? I don't have an opinion yet ... and the NGC explanation seems equally plausible.