Take a look at this 1966 10-Won Coin in NGC MS-63 Holder: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Korea-South-Korea-10-Won-1966-NGC-MS63-/123911328317 This one has "full pagoda eaves." This is a diagnostic that I thought up after examining many examples of these 1966 10-Won coins. This was the first year that the South Korean Mint struck its own coinage. They used coining dies made in Britain by the medallist firm, John Pinches Ltd. Often, this particular date appears with the eaves of Dabo Pagoda not fully struck up, making the eaves look "mushy," while the reverse has a scratchy or pockmarked "10," noticeable at the center of the numeral. This was either due to low coining press pressures and/or excessive relief on both sides of the coin in the same general area. Later dates of the 10-Won coin do not seem to have this issue. This particular 1966 10-Won coin in the above eBay listing seems fully struck. Here are some examples of uncirculated 1966 10-Won coins that are not as fully struck: . Slightly blobby eaves. . More Pronounced blobbiness quite blobby, if not worn die state.
Yeah, this one has slight weakness in the eaves. I think the relief was too high in the design. You don't see this for 1967 and later dates.
I appreciate this thread @mlov43 I have been looking for some nice examples of the 1966 5 & 10 won. It blows my mind how expensive these are in uncirculated condition, and unfortunately they are not in my budget at this time. I did find some nice circulated examples at the right price. They will have to do until I can upgrade.
Yo! Welcome to the Darkside! Yep. I have found that these coins are incredibly hard to find now in Mint State Grades. If you could have seen the prices for these in 2005... You'd find lots, in graded holders even. Just three years ago, there were the occasional one. My theory on "what's happened" is that many of these coins have first migrated from dealers' world-coin inventories (where they believed that these coins were worthless or just a few bucks) to collections as the prices for these coins started to rise precipitously in the early-mid 2000s. I think many migrated to collectors in Korea. The problem now is that there is NO inventory of these in Mint State anywhere (it seems). I've had good luck searching ebay.de (German Ebay) and ebay.co.uk (British ebay). However, they've sort of dried up now, too. Here's mine. The 1966 10-won was from an NGC MS-64 holder, crack out, of course, to put into album. The 1966 Five-Won was in an NGC holder at MS-65. And then I have two "big key date" 1970 bronze 10-Won coins in MS-64, as you can see here.
Here's some recent South Korean auction house results from 2019-2020 (except first one, which is 10 years old, but is an MS-66, the top pop, and one of FOUR in the NGC census). All of these were sold in NGC holders at Hwadong auctions in Korea, and prices in red on the right are in Korean won:
Also, here's a photo of how these labels can appear for these "bronze" 10-Won coins. Numbers 1 and 4 are what you would get about six or more years ago if you simply submitted to NGC. They'd tell you (without a fee) whether your coin was the bronze or brass variety (only really useful for the 1970-dated coin to authenticate which one it is, since that date has both). Number 3 is what you get now, IF you don't pay NGC the extra $75 for "metallurgical analysis" and Number 2 is what you get if you do (and your coin is the bronze variety).
