The PCGS Low Ball Registry Set
by
Mike Thorne, Ph.D.
	For decades, the standard advice for new coin collectors is to buy the best specimen possible when you're building sets. The reason is that if you purchase coins just to fill holes, you're likely to want to upgrade them as your numismatic knowledge and budget increase.
	So, rather than continually upgrading, if you buy nice coins to begin with, you'll be satisfied with them longer. This will almost surely save you money in the long run.
	Buying the best coin you can afford is really the object of Registry Sets. According to one online site, "A registry set is a collection of slabbed coins that have been certified by one of the two major coin grading companies: Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) and Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC)." The major purpose of the Registry Set is to allow you to compare your set with the efforts of other collectors of similar material.
	Recently, however, PCGS has invented a new kind of Registry Set: the Low Ball Set. This reverses the standard advice, as a collector pursuing a Low Ball Set looks for the worst coins for his or her collection. By worst, I don't mean coins that are damaged or unsightly because of ugly toning. I mean coins with the lowest conceivable certified grade.
	To me, the lowest collectible grade is either G-4 or possibly AG-3+. Such a coin will have its major detail, such as a complete bust on the obverse and eagle on the reverse, if these are the design features. It won't have the finer details, such as letters of Liberty, or wheat stalks, or vertical lines in the fasces.
	Despite the lack of detail, if a decent G-4 is all a collector can afford, such a coin will still display the major features of the design type. It will be something that most collectors would be glad to have.
	The ideal coin in a Low Ball Set, on the other hand, will have received a certified grade of PO-1! In other words, the lower the grade, the better the coin for a Low Ball set.
	To find out the requirements for a coin in Poor-1, I consulted the various grading guides in my numismatic library. What I found is that the major guides don't go down that low, considering a coin with that little detail as uncollectible.
	For example, the 6th edition of The Official American Numismatic Association Grading Standards for United States Coins illustrates grades down to AG-3 for Morgan dollars. On the front cover, the book promises that it contains "EVERY COIN, EVERY GRADE, CIRCULATED TO MINT STATE." Obviously, this is not true if coins in FR-2, and PO-1 are deemed collectible.
	The 2nd edition of Grading Coins by Photographs takes Morgan dollar grades down to G-4 and G-6, with no grades below this. The statement below the G-4 coin reads, "The Morgan dollar is seldom collected in grades lower than G-4."
	So, what are the characteristics of a coin in PO-1? According to Heritage Auctions, a PO-1 coin is "Barely recognizable. Large parts of the design will be completely flat. The date may be barely visible or completely missing. Also known as Basal State."
	For the PCGS grade of PO-1, the date and mintmark must be identifiable. In other words, they can't be completely missing. Actually, there are some coins that are identifiable without a date. The 1916 Standing Liberty quarter springs to mind, as do the 1913 Type 1 Buffalo nickels.
	I looked at the Low Ball collections on the PCGS website and found some things that surprised me. First, there are more than 1,100 registered sets, so this seems to be a pretty popular type of collecting. 
	Among the Low Ball denomination sets, there are some series conspicuous by their absence. For example, there are no half cent or cent sets, and I know there are many extremely low-grade large cents, Indian cents, and Lincoln cents in existence. I would be surprised if none of these have been certified by PCGS.
	In addition, Low Ball Morgan dollar sets seem to be quite popular. Of these, the most popular by far is the Morgan Dollar Mintmark Set, with 323 sets competing. Undoubtedly, the reason for this popularity is the ease with which the set can be assembled, as only five coins are required for set completion. That is, all you need is one dollar produced at each of the five mints that made them. Of course, for the Denver-minted coin there is only one possibility, the 1921-D. With over 20 million minted, however, it is probably not much of a problem to find one that circulated extensively. 
	Having spent most of my time looking at the leading Low Ball sets of Morgan dollars, I was surprised to find that not all Low Ball sets consist of really low-grade coins. In fact, the current #5 ranked set in the Morgan Dollars, Basic Set category contains coins that are not Low Ball at all. For example, the set's 1878-CC is graded MS-64 PL!
	In the whole set, I counted only four coins that I would consider appropriate for a Low  Ball set: 1879-CC in FR-2, 1888-O and 1903-S in G-6, and 1893-CC in G-4. To me, this seems to defeat the purpose of Low Ball collecting if you have relatively high grade pieces in a Low Ball collection. 
	The #3 ranked set in the category consists of almost all dollars with really low grades, such as PO-1 to AG-3. Still, the set has six "ringers," coins grading either MS-66 or MS-67! I suppose it's what you would call a "work in progress."
	Do collectors like the Low Ball approach because all the coins are ridiculously inexpensive? You might think so, but you would be wrong. The PCGS Blog has a picture of a PO-1 1897-S dollar. Below this, the text reads, "This 1897-S Morgan Dollar graded PCGS Poor 1 sold for $565 on November 2010. The same coin in Uncirculated PCGS MS63 grade sells for under $120. And there are many more PCGS Poor 1 examples in the market realizing even more."
	In other words, the worst of the worst are not necessarily cheaper than their more attractive counterparts. But, as the saying goes, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." To the Low Ball collector, a coin with virtually no detail looks better than one with full mint luster and lots of detail.
	What do you think of this form of collecting?