The Ever-Controversial Veryfine

I have to say that I think PCGS overgraded these coins. As far as I know, a VF Walker needs to have skirt lines visible in the leg area (though there can be small worn spots).

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Originally posted by Metalman

Hi Stephen

This coin [1919] although an early Walker falls in front of the modified die time frame this having occured in 1918 with the re worked morgan dies,, the question then becomes since we know that some of the coins struck with the Morgan reworked dies have weaker skirt lines it seems from pcgs that this secondary grading stardard applies only to the branch mint walkers.

secondly the notation concerning these coins indicates a single focal area as being the generally weakly struck detail IE Miss Liberties Left hand .

Hope this helps a little in your efforts to accurately grade the 1919 Walker .

Rick

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Hi Rick,

Sorry for this post's length but this seems to point to a more universal problem in grading "standards."

Like everything I've read on the early Walker skirt line issue, PCGS's information is mysterious and misleading. In general, information on the skirt line issue with many Walkers is sometimes contradictory and always vague. This is extremely annoying because it doesn't seem like the kind of information that would be hard to clearly provide.

I have trouble with PCGS's published grading standards, in general, for two major reasons. (1) Their standards are not reflected in their grading way too often, and (2) their guidelines are too broad and tend to disregard the unpleasant fact that every coin is unique, that such terms as VF, even qualified by 20-25-30-35, don't really describe any coin that actually exists until it is assigned one, and then only as a broad descriptive term.

We all know it isn't hard to find coins that differ widely in appearance and both get the same grade because - putting aside for the moment the subjectiveness of the individual grader - not only does every series (like Walkers, Wash quarters, etc.) have its own set of idiosyncracies that must be taken into account, every date and branch mint has its own set of sub-standards.

Thus, unless you know that fully struck 1935-D Walkers do not exist, a high grade on what appears to be a poorly struck specimen will appear mysteriously overgraded, but in reality it is graded accurately, relative to the known population.

These distinctions are so much a part of the formal apparatus of professional grading, it seems obvious to me that at least one reason people can't figure out the grades they're getting from PCGS is that their written grading standards are just a framework and susceptible to infinite qualification, and what really goes on in those grading rooms is more responsive to those qualifications than to the written Standards.

Here's a fact, as far as I can tell, about early Walkers: While each year and branch before 1923 has idiosyncracies, none of them are significant enough to discern a full fledged variety - other than the differing placement of the mint marks on the 1917 D and S issues.

I don't know what supposedly happened in 1918. I wish I had access to Breen because what I have, Swiatek, while written lovingly no doubt, is also written very poorly and somewhat arbitrarily so that it's hard to figure out. He comments on each date/mm and is vague about the skirtline issue until 1923-S. He definitely says skirt lines are weak on all issues 1916-17 from all branches. In his commentary, he says now and then that early walkers have weak skirtlines and it's a design issue. Then, for the 23-S, he says, "The mint decided to improve the appearance of design by more deeply engraving and extending upward, Miss Liberty's skirt lines." It seems that differences before 1923 were all a subset of the "weak skirt line design" and were strike issues. He's silent about 1918 so I'm not aware of the distinction you're making (I think).

PCGS's descriptions here are not very much use because they fail to let us know what they're talking about with "modified morgan designs," especially how that concept either does or does not describe the phenomenon of nearly universal "weak" skirt lines on all Walking Liberty Half-dollars minted before 1923.

Plus, it must be remembered that many of these sorts of grading points become less significant in circulated grades. From the Walkers I've seen for more than just a glance, almost all early ones have been circulated. So if there's a weakness of design issue (pre 1923) and a weakness of strike issue for that particular date/mm (e.g., the 1919-S which had notorious strike problems) the grader would hardly consider a nearly complete lack of skirt line detail on, say, a "VF" 1919-S, since all those "starting at go" weaknesses will have been multiplied by the fact that the coin in question has been circulated.

And the fact is, while some pre-1923 dates have discernable skirtlines, the clearly incuse lines, especially those over the extended calf first start appearing to some degree on virtually all collectible Walkers from 1923 to the end of the series.

So maybe we were better off when coins were "nice" "fine" "very nice" etc. .... Nah!

I feel I have gotten a little better at grading coins myself since I started here at this forum and I wouldnt send themm to begraded either if I werent trying to complete one of my sets on one of the TPG's registry, was trying to do 2 TPG's registry sets (NGC and PCGS) but found that trying to copmplete both was killing me so I hined in on the NGC for now and may go back to the PCGS later