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 Replies: 7 / Views: 1,253 |
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New Member
United States
7 Posts |
What is a RAW coin and what if anything, besides the selling price, makes it any different from a graded coin? What do the initials VAM mean? I'm new here and I hope I don't make myself look to stupid asking these questions, but ya gotta learn. |
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Pillar Of The Community
3147 Posts |
Welcome to the forum Bill Green! I have a life long friend with the same name!!! Basically there are RAW coins and SLABBED coins. The term raw is used to signify they have NOT been authenticated, graded and slabbed by a third party grading service. Many collectors world wide collect ONLY raw coins while others lean towards the slabbed and graded but one must beware the huge differences in costs from one to the other. Someone else will have to explain VAM in detail to you as I have no interest, nor the time, in finding minute varieties of any one coin but there are lots of knowledgable collectors out there who do! It is a more detailed study of varieties and the dies involved in striking individual coins. Someone will be along to give you a better answer as there are those who are into VAMS on this forum. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
14454 Posts |
VAM stands for the the two guys names that wrote the book (literally) on morgan varieties/errors, their names are Leroy C Van Allan & A. George Mallis. the word VAM comes from their initials Van Allan and Mallis (V.A.M.). what people use the term VAM for is the different errors of the coin, like certain die cracks, polish marks, and so on. There are about 1500 varieties of just the Morgan dollar and more are being found about every day
Edited by Bryan1315
04/20/2006 8:55 pm
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Forum Mom
 United States
5877 Posts |
Slabbed coins can be broken down further into Top Tier, Second Tier, and non-tiered companies, also. PCGS (Professional Coin Grading Service), NGC (Numismatic Guaranty Corporation), and ANACS (used to be American Numismatic Association Coin Certification but now is no longer owned by the ANA and the letters are not an acronym for anything) are the most respected companies and are considered Top Tier. Second Tier grading companies include ICG (which is occasionally included in the Top Tier and have been improving their grading and quality recently, NTC (which is known for overgrading), and ACG (AccuGrade, which is considered to be very inaccurate in their grades and have been known to slab counterfeit coins.) They are considered to be in the second tier only because they are well-known and established (mostly from lawsuits that they started against others for slander.) Non-tiered grading companies include NNC, SGS, SEGS, MCCS, CCCS, PGS, and many others. There are also a number of these companies that are sold exclusively by certain ebay sellers and are not truly third-party-graded at all. |
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New Member
 United States
7 Posts |
Well ask and ye shall receive. I am throughly impressed at the knowledge that this forum posseses and I am glad that I happened to stumble upon it while just meandering around the Internet the other day. Thank all of you for the answers you have given me. I hope someday that I may return the favor and post some information that ya'll could use. It's great to know that people still collect ungraded coins because that is basically what I have. I do collect Morgans and now I guess I'll just have to do more reading on this VAM stuff. Any Idea where a person might find some good reading on the subject of VAM's? Thanks again, Bill |
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Forum Mom
United States
5877 Posts |
The book I use is the Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia of Morgan & Peace dollars by Leroy C. Van Allen and A. George Mallis. This book is also called the VAM Book. You may also want to look for the Red Book of Morgan dollars by Q. David Bowers. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
14454 Posts |
I also use the encyclopedia of morgan & Peace dollars by Leyroy Van Allan and George Mallis. It has had some updates because they are finding new varities almsot every day and the updates to the book are here (DO NOT CLICK IF ON 56K!!! it is HUGE) http://68.209.172.223/vamupdate/index.htm |
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Rest in Peace
United States
2684 Posts |
Welcome to the forum, Bill! We are always happy to help new collectors. Your questions have basically already been answered above, but I'd like to reinforce one notion. The term VAM is applied only to Morgan and Peace silver dollars and not to other coin varieties. Most VAMs are almost microscopic or only just visible to the naked eye (there are some glorious exceptions) and only a few add value to any particular coin except to those VAM collectors who might be after a particular variety. There's over 3000 VAM numbers (may be up to 4700 with the recently updated list, but only 277 Morgans and 52 Peace dollar VAMs will be attributed by PCGS, one of the top three coin grading services. Here's an informative article on PCGS's VAM attribution: http://www.pcgs.com/VarietyFAQ.htmFred |
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Replies: 7 / Views: 1,253 |
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Posted 04/20/2006 8:43 pm
