Hi all, I have been collecting Kennedy half dollars for years. One observation I have made is 1980 D and 1981 D Kennedy halves have a common issue (even from Mint Sets). There are scratches at the neck, cheek, and below part in the hair. These look like the coin was slid, obverse side down, on a hard surface. Does anyone know the cause, and how does this impact the grade (I immediately assume AU at best, but it is so common, are these manufacturing issues that do not hurt the grade so drastically)?
In effect that's exactly what happened. Or the reverse happened, a hard surface like an album slide was slid across the coin. But the effect is not limited to just those dates/mints. It affects all dates/mints equally. The same is true with any coin. The high points are what comes into contact first, so the high points are where you will see these contact marks.
When a plastic slide is able to scratch deep into metal, well physics laws will have to change. This is not wear marks, these are dug into the surface. This would have needed to be more like concrete, or some surface that is hard enough, with significant pressure to dig into the surface of the metal. And I have only seen these specific scratches on Denver produced halves through the early 80's. And on those, it is very common. And it is interesting as many of these coins are full luster everywhere else, very clean (very high MS) if these three areas were not damaged. Almost like they were pushed through a slot/gate that was just a smidge too small prior to being rolled / packaged in mint sets.
About 96% of the mint set '80-D's have a shallow scratch on the obverse and 2% have the scratch on the reverse while 2% are unaffected. The really painful part is that the vast majority of the unaffected coins are poorly struck. This was almost certainly caused by the mint set packaging equipment for this date. If memory serves it is the first time packaging was 100% automated except for loading the magazines that fed the coins. After 1979 all gem sets and odd ball sets get much scarcer.
Cladking...the mint set packaging process seems to be a better explanation...so the question is this....given the marks are created by the Mints process, how do these marks impact the grade of the coin?
I would expect the services to go a little easier on shallow wide scrapes especially on the '80-D but it still will lower the grade. It takes about 700 1980 mint sets to to find one solid gem Denver half because of this. I don't think I've ever seen a true superb gem. Roll coins come without the scrapes but tend to have strike, surface, and marking issues. A lot of the coins graded gem for this date may well come from rolls. There are runs of the other denominations in the '80 set with scrapes but it affects a small percentage except with the Denver half.
It's really a shame since there are lots of really gemmy and PL coins with the scrape. Except for the scrape the '80-D comes exceedingly nice.
Well...I have found my 80D without the scuff...but can't seem to find an 81D...that is the biggest hole in my Kennedy Gem+ Set
