I'm half way decent at grading Morgans, not an expert by any means. I can pickem a point or two within TPG standards (if not details) . But grading Peace dollars seems to be like sorcery to me. Is anyone here good at it? I've looked at all of the documentation on it and it's still a mystery to me, even after looking at slabbed vs raw coins. A total whiff on all accounts. Who here is good at it and what are the key points not mentioned in the "official" documentation?
That doesn't help. At all. Peace dollars were so poorly struck. I wave the white flag at that. It's sorcery, I tell you!
I do have a soft spot for those and have completed a few sets. One spot to see is the reverse eagle shoulder the other easy spot is the cheek. Ms 64 up have clean fields and nice rims. Denver’s with nice luster are snapped up pretty quick. Get some 1922 in various grades, they don’t even seem to increase with the price of silver ( yet ). Bowers has a guide book on silver dollars that’s useful and pretty cheap on eBay
Just bear in mind that Peace Dollars have a design that makes it difficult. What looks like wear is the design.
I have a bunch of them, and I'm ignorant as can be about the wear you mention. I sent a couple that were really nice off for grading and was shocked that they came back AU instead of BU. One had NO bag marks or hairlines and cartwheeled. I think that one came back AU 55. They were not dipped either, or at least not in 50 years. I think I'll take a few to the coin show this coming spring and ask opinions from the ANACs guy or some other dealers. Thank you for the reply.
I feel much the same. I've had weird experiences with peace dollars. Coins I think are MS, experts call them sliders, and I absolutely can't see wear. I have a '21 graded low mint state, I say if it's truly MS, it should be graded higher, it's come back MS61 from 2 cert. companies...I have low confidence when grading peace...like you say, I find Morgans much easier.
I think the biggest obstacle in grading Peace Dollars is that there are so many different luster profiles that it really becomes difficult to discern satin luster from an overdipped coin. With respect to the incomplete strike on the obverse portrait, always look for friction in the fields. Typically, without friction in the fields, the TPGs will grade the coin as a mint state coin (see photo). Lastly, the obverse carries much more weight than the reverse and the condition of the obverse can be grade limiting even with a tremendous reverse.
What do you attribute that scuffed look right above IN GOD on the obverse? Toning? So confusing to me. And on most all reverses, the word PEACE is barely legible even on uncirculated dollars. I guess that's just a mint strike issue with all Peace dollars.
It is hard to see from that photo, but it wasn't a scuff mark, it is toning. My other problem is that most of my collection were gems that rarely had the strike weakness in the hair. This is the only example I could find. Most of my collection looked like this:
