Here’s a coin that I bought late last year, graded by PCGS in MS-64 FBL. Only 3 left to go to have the set graded like this one. The coin has a few marks.
Sounds like we're both doing a set. I had an ungraded set of all MS in an album I sold a few years back for $600. The album was probably worth 10% of it. (Melt value would be $1020 now) Now I'm getting another set together but this is a graded registry set. It's unbelievable how affordable graded 63-65 FBL examples are across this series. I just gave $60 shipped for a 54, MS64FBL. And there's a huge selection to look through to cherry pick higher quality ones. This series falls in a numismatic sweet spot where it was old enough to be 90% silver, and recent enough to have been saved in large quantities. This is a set that will be pushed by the tail winds of melt value in coming years. Considering it's $25 minimum to get them in a slab plus all the other fees and shipping, any MS, FBL example under $100 seems like a bargain to me. The bare melt value's $29 right now. They're just in abundance and I'm not complaining. The luster on some of them is just crazy. I think it's an under appreciated series.
Yes, the grading for slabbed Franklin Half Dollars is all over the place. I saw that when I was a dealer. I think the one you have might have too many marks for the MS-64 grade. They probably gave it a push because of the full bell lines. Years ago I got a roll of 1962-D Franklin Half Dollars from the bank at face value. I was at the bank and saw that the teller had a bunch of rolls of Franklins haves in front of her. I leaned over and saw Ben Franklin looking back at me at the end of the roll. I asked what she was going to do with them, and she said "Stick them in the vault." I asked if I could buy the lot, and she said yes. The roll of 1962-D's were all Unc., but they were not nice. There were only a couple that I could grade MS-63. I think that's why the prices are so high for the MS-65s on the Grey Sheet.
