Should coins with too many chops be discounted?

I agree with Publius2, it's a niche market. I think most collectors with an interest in trade dollars like to have at least one chopmarked example; and they usually sell at a discount, so they can provide an opportunity to acquire, say, a CC trade dollar at a better price than an unmarked example. The trick is finding ones that haven't been scrubbed clean, or where the design is severely damaged by the chopmarks. I know the owner of the #1 set (all PCGS) of chopmarked trade dollars, and most of his have 1 or 2 chopmarks, with the design and surfaces otherwise in good shape.
I think the seller of the coin in the OP is testing the waters and maybe trying to expand the market for heavily chopmarked coins (read their description in the listing) with this "aspirationally priced" coin.

 

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here are a couple that are more to my liking:

 

Saw one several years ago that was "cupped" like the baseball commemoratives from a few years ago. Brought $450-$500.
It is a niche market.

 

Well, I have to disagree with the first part of the post. Chopmarks show that the coin travelled to China on a sailing vessel, took part in commerce there, and then returned to the US. I think that is an interesting link to the past and Sino-US commerce. Some of the chopmarks have meaning and have been interpreted. Some like the cartouche chop on the 75-CC above are scarce. Chopmarked 1875-P trade dollars are so rare as to be absent from major collections. Chopmarks add another dimension to collecting and are a legitimate avenue for research. Absolutely not the same as taking a hammer and chisel to a coin.

 

There are fake Trade dollars with chopmarks. Sometimes the mark was on the original coin, sometimes added to the fake later.

 

here is a chopmarked fake I bought years ago on eBay.

 

Quite a few chopmarked trade dollars also have test marks on them made by twist drills, to see if the coin was just a plated base metal. That's damage. Chopmarks, by contrast, convey information and permanently place that coin into an historical context. It's an artifact. So it looks like we are having a discussion about linguistic categories, and what belongs in those categories. I do not believe that chopmarked coins belong in the category called "damaged." Apparently, neither does PCGS>

 

Pretty brutally chopped coin, but it does have a coolness factor to it.

To answer your question, however, you are wrong to think that they should be sold at a discount, as they should be sold at the price that the market will bear, whether or not it is a discount. You would be right to think that it's counterintuitive that a chopmarked Trade dollar would not sell at a discount. As it happens, the coin in the eBay auction sold in August at a Heritage auction for $432, which is a bit of a discount, but perhaps not as severe as you might expect. The eBay seller appears to be looking for a sucker at his asking price, which will likely not work.

 

Purchased this thing for $5 about 30 years ago - not a lot more than melt value at the time. A 200+ year old dollar sized coin that has evidence of a long circulation in Asia has lots of cool factor to me.

 

That's a really cool chopmarked 8R, scottishmoney. I'd love to have that in my collection. Interesting that the chops on 18thc coins tend to be smaller and "lighter" than the large heavy marks on the trade dollars.

 

Since there is a fixed number of classic coins, TPGs need to be creative in order to generate more revenue, we agree on that.
If customer pressure induced the TPG's to change their grading policies regarding chopmarked coins, imo said TPG's have become enlightened.

 

whoa lots of opinions here, but its interesting to see how the market pricing has changed over the years. Thanks for all the input!