Tips On Grading Peace Dollars? - Coin Community Forum

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Author	Replies: 5 / Views: 1,402
delaner Pillar of the Community United States 870 Posts	Posted 09/21/2010 6:29 pm Hi all... I've got a couple of handfulls of Peace dollars I'm trying to grade, at least in a general sense. After staring at pictures on Photograde for a while, I'm still having a hard time. It stinks because this, to me, is a beautiful coin - one of my favorites. It looks like the major teller is the feathers on the eagles wing. With that in mind, I'm having a really hard time distinguishing between a nice VF and a weakly struck AU. Anybody have any tips or other tells? Thank you! Edited by delaner 09/21/2010 7:04 pm Report this Post to the Staff

johnny54321 Rest in Peace United States 4849 Posts	Posted 09/21/2010 8:21 pm The biggest factor here is going to be the luster. A weakly struck AU will have plenty of cartwheel action under a direct light source, while a VF will be pretty much void of luster. An AU should have at least 50% of it's luster remaining. Report this Post to the Staff
delaner Pillar of the Community United States 870 Posts	Posted 09/22/2010 4:03 pm Hmmmm.... so noted! Thanks, Johnny! Report this Post to the Staff
thq Pillar of the Community United States 3343 Posts	Posted 09/27/2010 9:44 pm The May 2004 issue of Coin Values had an excellent article on Peace dollar grading. The photos from the article and some of the text are included in the book "Making the Grade". But the original article by Randy Campbell is better if you can find it, because it describes the striking quality for every coin in the series. 1924P, 1925P (see the fine hair detail on my avatar?) and 1926P are almost always well struck, while 1921P and most of the S mint coins are weakly struck. Cartwheeling indicates a coin being close to mint state but you don't see it on every coin. And cartwheeling isn't something that can be photographed. You have to have the coin in hand to see it. For this reason I'd recommend keeping a few inexpensive slabbed Peace dollars around as grading references. "Two minutes ago I would have sold my chances for a tired dime." Fred Astaire Edited by thq 09/27/2010 9:50 pm Report this Post to the Staff
Bryan1315 Bedrock of the Community United States 14454 Posts	Posted 09/27/2010 9:58 pm Peace dollars are one of the hardest coins to grade for me. Most of them have mushy details from weak strikes and its almost impossible to grade them from photos. Luster will be the one thing I would say would need to be looked at to determine a AU from a MS and if there are no breaks in luster then you know its at least MS-60 and go from there with a grade Report this Post to the Staff
delaner Pillar of the Community United States 870 Posts	Posted 09/29/2010 5:09 pm thanks THQ and Bryan - thq, I'm definitely going to see if I can find a back-issue of that article! Thanks!! Report this Post to the Staff
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