I was looking at Some Morgan Dollars on Ebay and being a newbie as far as Silver dollars go, I have know Idea what is so different about a DMPL... actually for that matter I cant remember what DMPL stands for, if some one could help me out it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Spotted Eagle, I would advise reading the link GD provided. I would also recomend being very wary of coins on ebay. A lot of sellers will call a coin a DMPL, when it is not. They will also often turn up the contrast on their camera, which can make a regular coin look dmpl, or in the case of proof coins, deep cameod. It is also my opinion that several of the grading companies used to call coins DMPL, that would not even grade PL by current market standards. In short, be very careful when buying this coins.
If you do see a morgan on ebay that you are interested in, you should post pictures in a thread here and see what the consensus on a coin is. I've definitely avoided my share of mistakes by doing just this.
DMPL stands for Deep Mirror Proof Like, a term that refers to business strike morgan dollars that have a deep proof like finish. PL stands for Proof Like; which is another term that refers to prooflike business strikes, but PL's do not have so deep a prooflike finish. PLs and DMPLs usually command a higher price than regular business strikes. You can determine whether a coin is PL or DMPL by holding a business card parallel with the coin. If you can read the text when the card is between 2 and 4 inches away, it is a PL. If you can read the text when it's 4-12 inches away, it is a DMPL. If you can read the text when the coin is more than 12 inches away it is a UDMPL (Ultra Deep Mirror Proof Like). The coin below is an 1883-O DMPL. Hope it helped! :hail:
Its amazing that with the 100's of millions of Morgan Dollars that the mint made so many proof like level coins all those years, and that this is almost unique to the Morgan run. And this is all for a coin the Mint largely was forced to make against its will since they sat in bags and were never circulated. Ruben
But it isn't unique to Morgans, there are quite a few series where PL and DMPL examples exist - there just aren't very many of them left. A large part of the reason for this is because the majority of Morgan dollars sat in bank vaults for decades and never saw the light of day until recent years. That's why it's easy to find Morgan examples.
