clembo

I got to thinking about this today at work. Are there more cleaned or original silver dollars floatng around out there?

Here's what brought it on. The boss has a rather big dealer coming in Saturday to buy some Morgans and Peace dollars in bulk. My boss can be kind of vague when assigning a job and never having met this dealer I'm not too sure how picky he is. I'm assuming not REAL picky as he is buying large quantities and will turn them fast.

Any way I was sorting a pile of 1921 Morgans, pre 21 Morgans and decent Peace Dollars. Better stuff and culls I'm kicking aside in separate piles. I'm pulling these out of a box that we toss them into after purchasing from walk ins for the most part.

I went through at least 1000 today so I'm doing this pretty fast as I'm waiting on customers up front (sorting in the back) to get these ready.

Now I am not a professinal grader but even perusing quickly I can spot a lot of cleaned coins. My observations?

LOTS of cleaned 1921 Morgans. Not really a surprise as we do buy "collections" and often times it will include a "rare Morgan Silver Dollar" from some magazine or TV ad. These are bought cheap by the sellers, buffed up and put in snappy display case.

Pre 1921 Morgans not as bad but still plenty that have taken a cleaning and oft times a harsh one. Same principle here. Many came from sets I would bet and sold to the uninformed at highly inflated prices.

The Peace Dollars really surprised me though honestly. SO many were cleaned. Now one has to realize when we buy these we pay X amount of dollar per coin. If it's better we put them aside immediately and the rest go into the box with just a glance.
I would have to say OVER half of the Peace dollars had been cleaned. That kind of surprised me actually.

Now I don't really collect either of the series' but if I did and was buying circulated I'd take the nice "dirty looking ones".

Just wanted to share that experience. Thoughts and opinions are welcome.

clembo

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