How do you value a coin with AU-Details?

Don't forget that TPGs make mistakes. I agree that it looks UNC, not AU. I don't know what a "smoothed" Morgan is supposed to look like - the ones on Heritage don't give me much to go on. There are 7 UNC smoothed there across all Morgans. The uniformity of the parallel lines make me wonder if it could be something else (like a planchet or die issue), but I'm pretty much clueless about Morgans.

 

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I think you mom may have gone over the piece with silver polish, going mostly in an up and down direction. I seen fine lines running north and south on the piece. I also see some black spots. These can form from saliva applied to the piece when someone might have sneezed or even breathed over it.

Value is tough to set because until a couple of decades ago, the 1878-CC dollar was considered common. Now I would say that is worth in higher end Very Fine grade range.

 

I could see my Great Aunt polishing them up before dropping them into each of the stockings. My mom said that her Aunt had little stockings that she hung on the mantle and put a silver dollar in each one for each of the children in the family.

I vaguely remember that my grandmother had 2 cardboard coin holders. Similar to a Whitman folder (but it was one piece, didn't fold) where you pushed the coins in with your thumb and could only see the front of each coin. I remember that she had one with Indian Head Cents and one with Buffalo Nickels. Both cards were complete but she had applied a coat of varnished so the coins wouldn't fall out. I don't know where those cards are today but I think that I would cry if I ever found them.

 

Very true. I've thought about sending it back to PCGS for a second look or possibly cracking it out and sending it off to NGC to get their opinion. I'm not ready to give up on the coin quite yet. My gut tells me that the lines were in the blank before it was struck regardless of how realistic that might be or not.

 

It has a cool story being in your family all these years. If it were me I would keep it as is and not worry too much about getting it regraded.

 

Yes, the grading services can say “no grade” one time and straight grade the next. I’ve had experience with that, but in this case, the cleaning hairlines are pretty obvious. When you have that, the chances of getting a different result are not good.

 

It's going to stay on the dinning room table for now. I'm only thinking about getting it looked at again because of it's special story. Value is nice to know but not my motivation at all. I just want the coin to get the credit that I think it deserves, as silly as that may sound.

If my hypothesis is correct, it's story would make a great Hollywood movie. Something similar to the Red Violin but staring Kevin Costner, Sam Elliot, maybe Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer as well.

On a brisk fall day in Carson City, Nevada, the hard working employees of the US Mint are beginning to roll out a new and different kind of coin. This time it was not gold but silver. Silver mined locally, from the famed Comstock Load discovered in the distant hills above the sleepy frontier town. Steam billowed from the brand new coin press and out pops a shiny new silver dollar. The coin immediately goes into a coin roll, with 9 others just like it. The rolls are then are loaded into a large canvas bag.

Traveling east, in the back of a coal powered railroad car, the coin makes it's way. Traveling safely through hostile Indian Country and managing to avoid gangs of train robbers on horseback, the coin finally makes it's way across the mighty Mississippi River. Crossing the frontier, the train winds it's way through the Appalachian Mountains until it reaches Union Station in Washington DC. From there the coin is loaded into the back of a horse driven Wells Fargo wagon. Surrounded by a posse of US Marshall's on horseback, the "money wagon" makes it's way down Pennsylvania Avenue to the US Treasury. Under the protection of armed guards, the coin would quickly be unloaded, eventually finding it's way into the basement vault. There it would sit in quiet solitude and contemplation for another 50 years.

Time marches on. Fast forward to post-war America. Harry Truman is living next door to the US Treasury in the White House. Eventually, the coin makes it's way from the vault to the cashier's money drawer. One crisp December afternoon just before Christmas, my Great Aunt walks into the US Treasury building, approaches the cashier window and asks for a roll of silver dollars. The clerk reaches into the dusty canvas bag, ravaged by time and a long hard journey. He pulls out a $10 dollar paper wrapped roll of silver dollars and hands it to my Great Aunt.

From there the coins make their way to my Great Aunt's house. I'm not sure how many kids were in the family at that time but I think there were probably 5-6 between the ages of 10-18 years of age. The coins would go into small stockings, and be hung from the mantle. As @johnmilton pointed out, it would have, most likely, been spit polished before going into the stocking. Probably a common practice back in the day but when we fast forward another 70 years; that simple act, much to the chagrin of her modern day descendant (i.e. me), removed the luster from the coin and left little black spittle dots all over it.

After Christmas, my mom believes that the coin would have gone into her dresser drawer and stayed there until she married my dad in 1958. After they got married, they would have opened up a joint checking account at the bank and purchased a safe deposit box. When she moved out of her parents house into their first apartment, the coin would have gone into the bank vault at that time.

It was there, left in the quiet darkness of the bank vault, along with 6 other silver dollars from other Christmas' past (a couple other Morgan's and several Peace dollars), the coin sat waiting patiently until the year 2022. This past summer, I took my mom to the bank to put away some estate papers. While we were there, we took the time to sit down in a little room next to the vault and take a look at what else was in the box.

 

Like I mentioned previously, I'm familiar with the GSA hoard but this coin would pre-date that. Is there a Morgan dollar historian around who might know of any more hoards? Most likely during the late 40's early 50's.

Would it have even been possible to get an UNC 1878 CC dollar from the bank/Treasury during that time? I've looked online but have come up empty. Maybe there is a physical book in someone's coin library that might have some information.

Am I correct in thinking that a person could have gone to the actual Treasury building to get silver dollars?

 

I think I just answered my own question: https://home.treasury.gov/about/history/the-treasury-building/treasury-cash-room

"When the Cash Room opened officially in June 1869 it functioned principally as a "banker's bank," supplying area commercial banks with coins and currency f rom Treasury vaults and handling the government accounts of the District of Columbia. Services were also offered to the public, including cashing of government checks, exchanging new money for old, redeeming silver certificates and gold certificates, and selling U.S. Treasury bonds.

Up until the early 1900s, gold, silver, and paper currency were delivered to the Treasury Building in horse-drawn vans and unloaded at the sidewalk entrance on Fifteenth Street, then hauled through corridors on hand-carts and deposited on a cargo lift, the first elevator in the building, which carried them to the Cash Room vaults. Several million dollars might be contained in the vaults at any given time; bags of notes, coins, and bullion were stacked floor to ceiling.

Changes made to modernize and meet the demands posed by the great numbers of patrons were not always attractive, and they contributed to a general deterioration in the appearance of the room that occurred over years of wear and tear. By the 1970s, the costs of operating the Cash Room and maintaining its staff and security could no longer be justified. The Cash Room closed on June 30, 1976."

 

Value . . . Priceless. Collectors keep coins for various reasons, and I have 1922 Peace Dollar that was given to my mom when she was a kid. I'll never part with it due to the memory of my mother. Having it on your table, to be viewed by all, is an excellent place to "display" it, IMHO.
Welcome to CT @Whendric

 

If that was mom's coin don't worry about what it was worth or what happened to it along the way. I have a 1942 dime that my dad gave me when I was about 10. Not worth anything to most people but it's probably the only thing I have left that he gave me sadly. As he has now been gone many more years than I knew him. I lost him in 1994 when I was 17. And only realized a few years ago that I still had that dime. I'm going to send it to pcgs with a sub someday. It is probably VG. But that is the only dime I have that he gave me. It is in my safe with that story written with it for now. He kept change in a baby food jar in the closet. I saw it sticking out the side one day. It was the first mercury dime I ever saw. I asked him what it was and he showed me and gave it to me. It was about 1986 and I was 10... how I still have it after all these years I'll never even know. It came with me in my car when I made my journey from Illinois to New Hampshire. I had forgotten about it until I found it. I don't even know really how it made it here with me...

 

What’s on top of the feathers on the obverse. Clash?

 

Sharp eyes, this was CT opinion back when I first posted it!

 

Thanks