Featured Exhibit - Grading The Morgan Dollar

You know with that kind of money, I don't even know if I'd want to do a grading set.

No problem, but I would like to add that MS63's and 64's are so close together and that it is typical to see 63's in 64 holders and 64's in 63 holders. I had a few of those 'criss-cross graded' coins myself.

The coin I posted is a very accurate representation of what a MS64 should look like, and you will find many in the market place that have cheek marks as bad as those that you see on the MS63 and sometimes even on the MS62.
Just have to know your series.

And by the way, I bet that 18880 Morgan is sweet!

 

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Great job on putting this together.
When you do something like this, is there a way to save the work and keep adding to it before you actually post it?

 

GREAT THREAD T-MONEY!!!! Very educational.

 

This is a great thread. Being new to coin collecting, this set and the barber half sets are my favorites. My father has a fair number of Morgans that belonged to his mother. I was checking them out this past week and wondering what they would grade because a few are really nice. The lions share of them are 1921s as expected but it's still cool to check them out. This thread is great because now I can take the coins and spend some time just putting my own grade on them.

Thanks for putting this together.

I do have a question regarding morgans that maybe someone could answer, regarding fake coins. Are there any tell-tale signs for Morgan dollars for spotting fakes that are applicable to all dates/mm? I realize that it might vary between years and MMs but for someone like myself, when I read threads about fake coins I still can't always see what people are talking about.

 

Where's the MS70 example? :goofer: Great thread T$!

 

If it looks strange, then it may be fake and should be avoided. Weight & dimension are probably your best tools for detecting a fake. The original cast fakes are easy to detect due to poor quality, wrong weight & dimensions, & visual evidence of casting bubbles or poor denticle definition. Modern fakes are struck & manufactured much like government mint products and are much (much) more difficult to authenticate. For these, you can refer to counterfeit detection books, Websites, and you can always post a photo here for opinions. I typed this quickly so I hope there are no type errors.

 

I had typed a lot of it, and just left the CT page open overnight on my laptop, along with the Heritage page I was on. I also copied and pasted it to Microsoft Word. I went ahead and previewed the thread after I did a few grades to see if I did everything right, and there were no problems with the links. I got to VF-25, and it didn't show up because it exceeded the picture limit. So I knew that VF-20 was the end of part 1. I saved that information on a Sticky Note (feature on Windows 7) directly to my desktop/home page. I continued to write the thread here on CT, previewing it, then copy/pasting to Microsoft Word.
The actual writing of this thread took several days. I didn't stay up all night writing this thread, although over this past week I've gotten less than 15 hours of sleep, and most coming the past two days.

Thank ya', appreciate your comment.

In my closet, I'm waiting until the market is just right.

Ya' know, I had written something similar, and my computer automatically restarted itself due to its updating. I was angry that I had to rewrite what I had typed, but looks like I won't have to. Collect89 pretty much covered the fake detections of Morgans.

Between doing what he said, and posting your coins here that are questionable, the only other thing to do is educate yourself, not only with this forum, but with books!

Here is a link to Wizard Coin Supply's counterfeit detection books, have a look:

http://www.wizardcoinsupply.com/products/counterfeit-coin-detection/

I hear Numismatic Forgery is really good.

 

Thank you. Very educational and well written. At some point I will need to get some of mine graded. For now I just look at them and wonder if their opinions will be the same as mine.

 

An outstanding thread. I only hope you are putting the same dedication into your studies as you did this thread. Really well done! Fantastic!

 

Amen to this. Find what it is you really do enjoy and live it. If you do, you will not "work" one day in your life. (by work, I mean dread, trust me) I actually work as hard as I can, and as hard as anybody I know, and love every minute of it.

 

And thank you for commenting
As a grading experiment, try looking at your coins, and try grading them, look up recent auctions of those coins in those grades that have sold, then after all that, see if they are worth getting graded. Post pics and grade ideas or questions you may have. (You could be more spot on than ya' think, and even if one of us who can grade em', like myself agrees with you, doesn't mean jack to what PCGS or NGC does. Inconsistency at its finest. Sometimes you gotta pray. )

Thank you Paul! Your opinion matters to me quite a bit, I've seen you write some of the most eloquently typed threads, with beautiful descriptive accounts of how things happened in chronological order, along with stellar photos. I think if I tackle one thing at a time, I can one day, get to or be better than, your level.
It'll be a while, as for my studies, this is how I write most papers. I always get 3+'s or 4's on my papers (scale is 1-4) and this year on my open ended responses, I think each one got a 3, (scale of 1-3) with one being a 100, and the rest being 90-95. My English teacher pulled me over and said that I was a very intelligent student and wanted me in a Pre-Ap class, I gave her my medical history and she understood my reasoning for declining.
My junior year I hope to be in AP classes. At the moment, I think my final average, with all my classes added up was around a 98 or so, and I get many scholarship opportunities to attend many different functions, supported by different organizations, but they are all too costly. I try to be as involved as I can, but sometimes it can be difficult with my health or money.

You know, I really think I can have a career in numismatics. Never been modest about my skills, there is still much more to learn, but I believe if I continue on my path, I will be at the level I need to be closer than most would've thought. Although, my primary choices, of being a math teacher or Gastro doctor are still complete toss ups. I don't know exactly what I want to do with my life, but I know it is my decision, and whatever I choose, is what I'll do, and numismatics, hopefully, can be a part of my life, somehow, someway.

 

Great post T$, lots of good information. I think it's also useful to see not only how the coins are graded...but to look at some of the inconsistency in the grading companies. When you compare the ANA standards to the images shown, you can see that PCGS is more lenient. Here is example right from your own post. Look at your 1893-S G4 Morgan. This coin doesn't have full rims on the obverse or the reverse. According to the ANA, full rims are required to make G4. Often times, TPGs let full rims slide on the reverse a little if the obverse is full, but in this case they allowed both to slide. Why? It's a key date. According to the ANA, that coins is a AG3.

Morgan's are quite challenging to accurately grade in the MS grades because there is such a wide variety of strike quality throughout the series. It is important to understand the characteristics of each date/MM to truly grade the coin accurately. For example, a 1880-S and 1892-O will look vastly different at MS65.

What you have here is an excellent general grading guide which this site has been lacking. I think you did a very nice job with it.

 

And you see, I was trying to hard to not show inconsistency in this thread.
The rim in the 1893-S isn't completely full, but I just couldn't grade it at an AG-3, and I totally understand why PCGS didn't as well. If it was an an AG-3 holder, that would be a PQ coin.
But all and all I have to agree with ya' just a tad, looking straight at my ANA grading standards guide it depicts a coin with full rims. (Although, I think if somebody came along and tried to grade their Morgan Dollar with this guide, and it was a G-4, and theirs had full rims, I think they would accurately grade it, by studying the descriptions and pictures long enough.

The reason I used 1893-S was it was a key date. I'm not going to find 1880-S in G-4, but for some reason there might be a random key date in another grade that is lower. For that reason I wanted to avoid, not only inconsistency in the grading company I used, the grading company itself, but the coin year/mm I used, and I think, for the lower grades I did a good job of that.

Yes some coins are graded differently due to many strike problems. 1892-O VF-35 might look like a piece of junk for a grade like that, but the strike was so poor for that year. I wanted to also used coins that didn't have many problems and if that year did have problems, I chose coins that didn't have many problems.

I think I did get lucky though, because I didn't have to look at very many coins to decide which coin I wanted to use for each grade, Heritage made this thread fairly easy for me!

Thank you Ritchie

 

I understand where you are coming from, but I have to disagree with you. I don't think this coin would be a PQ AG3, I think it's a true AG3 but nothing more. The only reason it was graded a G4 was because it is a key date. If this coin was a 1921, it would be a AG3 with rims like that. I don't believe it is correct to bump a grade because of key date status...but TPGs tend to do so.

This is one of those things that buyers need to be aware of with Morgans (and many coins for that matter).

 

I agree that coins shouldn't be bumped due to their status, all TPG's do it, and it is wrong.
People will continue to buy coins such as the G-4 on this thread. I'd still consider the example posted a nicer, premium quality AG-3, but I can agree with the fact that it isn't a G-4 based on ANA standards. (I think if you sent this coin to PCGS 10 more times, it would grade G-4 more times than not) I really do think they did throw rims out the window to the rest of the detail on the coin, this, for me, is a tough coin to call AG-3.

 

A magnet is a useful tool for detecting counterfeits.

 

I agree that if resubmitted it would continue to grade G4. I don't think it has anything to do with the rims being thrown out the window...what it has to do with is PCGS playing by their own rules. They don't use the ANA standards, they have their own and at times they stretch them. This is something people must understand when they buy these coins and why everyone needs to learn to grade. I would not pay G4 money for that coin.

I really believe this coin would have graded AG3 had it been a 1921.

I personally don't see what makes this coin so PQ for an AG3. It has nice even wear that you would expect for the grade. It's a very nice looking coin, but the wear is certainly there.

 

You see it must just be me then, because I'm thinking that the detail they saw on the coin made them forget about the rim, and they gave it a G-4.
I actually want to see what would happen if we had a 1921 that looked exactly the same, although I doubt it would prove anything, TPG's are inconsistent all the way around, just seen more with key dates.

 

It's a nice looking coin. IMHO, they gave it a G4 for 4 reasons: 1) it's a key date, 2) the rims are pretty full (just not completely), 3) it has nice eye appeal for a circulated coin, and 4) they don't use the ANA standards.

You are right, they are inconsistent.

 

Yeah, I guess you are right, but it is still hard, for me at least to call the coin an Ag-3 but I get what you are saying.
PCGS can make and brake their own rules.