Thread: Catbert's FUN Haul - (1) 1945 Walker

OK - this will be the first of 4 posts on the coins & tokens I acquired at FUN. The first one is a 1945 Walker Half that caught my eye on Wayne Herndon's table. I'm not a Walker collector, but I do love the classic design. What attracted me was the pinkish obverse toning, the gold rim reverse toning plus a few other things to be mentioned :




Looking at the reverse in more detail revealed cool die polish (and is that a die crack between the wings?):



And, some very neat die cracks along "DOLLAR"



So, while I love all the pieces I acquired at the show I think this one was the most satisfying given all the various things going on in a common date coin.



Do you like it?

I like it!!

Very nice aquisition Catbert! A very nice luster to the coin aswell!

Beautiful.

MS65 ???? This coin doesn't come close. The obverse has wear .. no full skirt lines and the hand is flattened. Sorry , but I think this is a PCGS mistake !

great looking coin.

Love the look!

I'm not a big fan of toned coins, but this is an exception. Beautiful!

Its a beautifull coin!

I like it very much and glad to hear your apprecition for the coin.

Nice die cracks!
And vincent2920 what I think you are seeing is die deterioration not wear, walkers are really hard to grade though.

Nice Walker.

Originally Posted by vincent2920

MS65 ???? This coin doesn't come close. The obverse has wear .. no full skirt lines and the hand is flattened. Sorry , but I think this is a PCGS mistake !

What a great way to congrats a guy on a purchase that he is happy with.

It is perfectly normal, and expected to be able to grade better than PCGS , especially from pic's on the internet. What ever line of work your in, it is probably the wrong one, you should be a sticker stickerer at CAC or something like that.

Originally Posted by vincent2920

MS65 ???? This coin doesn't come close. The obverse has wear .. no full skirt lines and the hand is flattened. Sorry , but I think this is a PCGS mistake !

Vincent - I appreciate your straightforward feedback......I am no Walker expert. An experienced mentor of mine felt it was accurately graded, but who knows? Perhaps the coin was market graded due to the toning.

My pictures don't do a great job, but I see full lower skirt lines when looking at the coin just now after seeing your comment that don't fully come into view in the pictures. My concern was over what looked to be either a weak strike or wear on the eagle's left leg feathers, but again I was told that this was a weak strike area. Perhaps another Walker collector can chime in. Warning - crappy picture below!

Ok, I'll chime in The lack of detail on the hand that Vincent mentioned is something I see constantly on Walkers, even ones given high grades by the top TPG's. The only thing that concerned me was the first thing he mentioned, about the skirt lines. They had me questioning the grade because 1945 is not a date well known for a very weak strike. The last picture you posted of the close-up on the skirt lines looked a little better, but still like there could be some slight wear. I know grading is hard from photos. And I know from experience that it is hard to capture the details of Walkers in pics. I imagine that if I had the coin in hand I would probably agree with what PCGS said. They may have given it a small bump for the toning though, which is a practice that I don't care for much. I'm kinda rambling here, lol. Anyway, I think its a great looking coin.