1896 Morgan Philadelphia Newbie Interest

Welcome to CCF! It's difficult to say with the pics, surfaces are too dark. But it looks uncirculated or lightly circulated. Morgan dollars are very popular. Some are common, some rare. Very common circulated Morgans are called "cull" which means they are only worth silver melt value or a few dollars over melt for stacking but they are not a collectable coin, no added numismatic value. Better condition up to mint state are worth more and have collectable value. Some rare Morgans sell for many thousands of dollars. Morgans from CC mint usually have numismatic value even if circulated. You can go to Vamworld.com to see the varieties but some features require a loupe magnifier to see them like clashes, die breaks, doubled die, etc. Here are a few tips:

1. ebay sold listings are a good place to check current prices, both raw and graded/slabbed coins.

2. Coins can have original surfaces which makes them worth more. They can be cleaned or fake. As a general rule do not clean coins.

3. The condition of a coin is very important. Is it mint state never circulated or has it been in circulation with wear, damaged with dings scratches, etc. The grading companies use a standard scale from ungradable all they way to a perfect MS70. You can find this scale on the internet like here:
https://www.pcgs.com/grades

4. There are a lot of fake Morgan and Peace dollars. Two easy tests are using a magnet and a tool called a ping tester. Morgan/Peace have a specific sound frequency when tapped on the edge. Fakes sound different. You could watch YouTube videos about fakes if you want. Unfortunately there's been instances where someone inherited a bunch of Morgan dollars or gold coins, other coin types, took them to a coin store only to find they were fakes.

5. If there is a local coin club or coin store in your area you could meet people who will help you learn.

I am mostly just trying to learn, so some grading knowledge is great too. I take it nothing stands out on this as a VAM. Thanks for the excellent advice!

Here are a couple of better pics.

Here is another try. I think resizing instead of just changing the image to 300kb helps.I'm not used to using such a small image size.

Au details cleaned just another super common junk silver cull Morgan

The date position is not consistent with VAM-1E. It might be VAM-28.

http://vamworld.com/wiki/1896-P_VAM-28

Good closeup photos!

For determining date position on Morgan dollars (and tons of other info,) go to the link below. The date position diagram is about a quarter of the way down on this page.

http://www.vamworld.com/wiki/Attribution_101