Hi everyone, If you have read any of my posts, you can tell I am a cent enthusiast. I need your help with grading the Morgan below, as I have no experience with Morgans. I was visiting my grandma in Ohio this week and knowing that I have started to collect, she pulled out her 3 boxes of coins that her dad left her. She has quite a collection that would have taken me the better part of two days to catalog and identify, but a few Morgans stood out amongst them all all and I came home with two of them to send off for grading. Both were 1881-O S1$'s. The better one is the one pictured below. There are very few marks and the obverse picture shows something going on on the lip, which is not there when looking at it under a loop. For some reason it only shows up in pictures. The obverse toning is hard to capture, but it is a rose/orange color which fades to a light green/blue in the lower hair curls. I did some research and found out that the New Orleans Silver dollars often show a weak strike due to extended die usage, but this coin looked phenomenal to the naked eye. Let me know what you think I should insure this bad boy for. Thanks, RR
Just out of curiosity, why does it look cleaned? It is blast white and highly lustrous. I can try to take some other pictures. I took one with my digital scope, but its not meant to take pictures that far away....just a different picture to work with. Here is a closeup of the lips though. Looks like streaks of toning under the scope. Thanks!
No it is not slabbed. Its been sitting in a shoebox in a roll for the since before 1969 when my great grandfather passed away. here are some more reverse pics. Hope they help. Thanks for the input.
No. It is not slabbed. He is considering sending it in for grading, if I understood correctly. I think it would be quite a gamble. It would have to be at least MS64 to come close to being worth the cost of certification. And although it has a shot, I would call it MS63, and probably cleaned. The marks on the left side of the obverse and right side of the reverse just don't look like normal bag marks to me. I'm guessing a TPG would bodybag this one.
I'd say it's a 63, not worth getting graded. I think it would grade. But I do agree there is a chance it would not. No, it isn't. Those are just contact marks - very short, light scratches.
Don't fall for the weak strike theory. 1881-O's come fully struck and georgeous. There was a bag found that produced severa hundred DMPL and PL's a while back. Very common to be PL/DMPL.
I have to agree with the others on this. It's a 63 on a good day and I don't see it grading higher than that and certainly not worth the cost to submit it, and we all could get a surprise if it came back as a 62, which is possible as well. It would look nice in an album or 2x2.
Hi Everyone, Just to give an update on this one....NGC just posted the grade of MS64* yesterday. I was surprised with the grade myself. I used a freebie grading service with my renewed membership, so there was no harm in sending it in. It was the first Morgan I have ever submitted, so it was a learning experience more than anything for me. Its going to be sent back to my Grandma.....maybe one day she will give it to me!
Nice coin, and I would have said 63 before reading that NGC graded it as a 64. Could have gone either way--decent but not super stike--that date does not always come "well struck." I have owned two that were high grade, but borderline strikes.
