whoopig

my best raw purchase .

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cdcda

Very nice indeed. Hard to tell from the pic, but looks to grade MS64.

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GDJMSP

For an O mint coin - I might go 65 for that one

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joesmom

Nice! I'm with GD on this one...I'd go 65. The fields look great with minimal bag marks on the cheek, and a pretty nice strike for an O mint.

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Midas

O mints are tough. What would grade MS65 for a New Orleans Morgan dollar may only grade MS63/64 for a San Francisco minted coin. Why? New Orleans had sloppy quality control compared to the other mints.

As for your coin, I agree with GD...and is that toning I see on the obverse?? If it is, you then have a nicer coin.

OldDan

One of the nicer "O" mint coins and a keeper for sure, raw or not! You have got yourself a winner.

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cdcda

Of the Morgans minted at New Orleans, the 1885-O is one of the easier coins to find with a decent strike such as this coin exhibits. As for the grading, I agree, it could go MS65. What held me back was the long vertical scratch just to the left of the chin on the obverse. Hard to tell without seeing the coin in person.

MS64 or MS65, its a beautiful coin as a Old Dan put it "a keeper for sure!"

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whoopig

that is not a scratch but a die crack. It is raised on the surface not into the surface.


Thanks for all of your opinions. I am going to get it slabbed just for protective purposes and then put away with the rest for college fund. With 2 daughters 2 years apart, I have to put all I can away for it.

Spider

now thats what I call a nice looking coin, very nice man

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McKinley

nice coin. O's are like they said, but i'll bet you get a 63 for it.
unless you send it to a dump of a service.. might get a 69 then

cdcda

Mint state coins are graded on their mint lustre, the quality of their strike, the state of surface preservation and their eye appeal. Let's take a look at each of these areas for this coin and how a grade on the Sheldon scale is assigned...

Surface Preservation - the most important areas to examine on a Morgan dollar obverse are the face and date. In this case, the face has a decent number of contact marks from rubbing against other coins in a bag or roll, but no major detracting bag marks can be seen. There does appear to be one or two minor nicks on the cheek, but they are not overly obvious. The date area looks clean as well. Examing the fields of the coin there is a noticeable die crack to the left of the chin, and this is in this case a detracting factor (although a minor one). Other than that, there are precious few marks. The rim and the area around the legend and stars also look good.

On the reverse the most important area is of course the eagle's breast and then the remainder of the eagle's body. In this case, although it is hard to tell from a photo, the eagle looks devoid of any detracting marks. There does appear to be a mark of some kind near the arrow points and it may be another die crack, but it is hard to tell from the photo.

Aside from marks, we also need to look for hairlines, evidence of cleaning and/or handling, all of which seem to be absent in this coin. There are a few black spots on both the obverse and reverse but I am hoping these are not marks on the coin.

Overall, on a scale of 1 to 5, the state of surface preservation for this Morgan Dollar would rate a 4.

Lustrel - here we are judging how mint lustre for this coin, both obverse and reverse, stacks up against the known characteristics for the 1885-O. Although it it hard to tell from a photo, it looks to me like this coin is blast white with what I would expect to be a beautiful cartwheel and probably and a darn near mirror like reverse field. The only problem area is Liberty's cheak where we see breaks in the lustre from contact with other coins. Overall, comparing this to other 1885-O's I would assign the coin a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5.

Strike - the 1885-O is not one of the weaker New Orleans dates (such as the 86, 87, and 88 New Orleans strikes) so we cannot consider this a strong strike for the date. We can however consider it just a bit about average. In looking at the quality of the strike on the Morgan Dollar, the key diagnostic areas are the hair above the ear and the eagle's breast. On a scale of 1 to 5, the strike is going to merit a 4 as well. Were this one of the weaker New Orleans dates, I would go a little higher.

Eye-Appeal: Here we get real subjective and taking into account a variety of factors, assign the coin a grade on a scale of 1 to 5 based on most importantly - the absence of presence of toning and the balance of any toning. In this case, we are lucky in that the coin is blast white! Assigning a subjective grade to a toned coin is much more difficult and could easily be disputed amongst even expert graders. In this case, without seeing the coin in person (and realizing that is highly unlikely that a 5 would be assigned to a coin lacking any toning) I give this one yet another 4.

So, how do I arrive at an MS64 designation from these numbers?

1. We recognize that surface preservation is the most important factor in determing the grade so we weight the result by multiplying it by two. Therefore our 4 becomes an 8.

2. Next we add all of our numbers together - coming up with a total score of 20.

3. Now we look at the ranges for the different mint state grades from 60 to 70:

5 to 12.99: MS60
13 to 13.99: MS61
14 to 17.49: MS62
17.5 to 18.99: MS63
19 to 20.49: MS64
20.5 to 21.99: MS65
22 to 22.99: MS66
23 to 23.99: MS67
24 to 24.49: MS68
24.5 to 24.99: MS69
25: MS70

So based on a review of the photo alone, this coin is assigned a grade of MS64. In person, it is possible that it may grade higher.

For those interested in learning more about grading mint state coins using the method above, purchase a copy of How To Grade U.S. Coins by James Halperin. And, realize that this method is meant to hone ones skills and in some cases, to support a more subjective and immediate grade. In other words, when initially said the coin grades an MS64 I took all of these factors into account - I did not go through and compute them. Only herein, to explain the grading process and how one might arrive at the grade I assigned, did I show this computation.

Hope this helps everyone.

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satootoko

cdcda - That's a great explanation of MS grading.

It's good to see you getting a little more active again,. Keep it up.

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OldDan

Valuable information and I now start looking for a copy of this book. Thanks for the heads-up.

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SilverDollarMan

N!CE coin, nice toning....MS-64, 65. Probably 65 cause of the O

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GDJMSP

Sorry old friend I meant to post this for the other day. No need to look for the book - unless you prefer it. The entire book is available on-line - Coin Grading

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