I've never been clear what the entries of Series and coin on this older PCGS label mean. Can you enlighten me? Thanks gang!
Series refers to the issue: 31 is Mercs, 31PR is Merc Proofs. Coin is the date/mint designation of the coin within the series, 1940 being the 5th issue of Merc Proofs. Multiple mint marks would get consecutive numbers before moving on to the next year (Series: 31 Coin:5 would probably be 1917-D). I think they quit doing it because they started putting so much other crap on the label. Nobody used the designations anyway.
And also series #s wern't assigned to everything. So there are coins in that same generation slab & label without the series line.
That's probably why they took it off. It also looked like crap and cluttered the label. It was removed before more stuff was added to the label.
PCGS used the internally but no one used them out in the real world. You were supposed to put the numbers on your submission forms when you sent coins in, and at the time they had a page on their site where you could look up the numbers so you could put them on the submission form. But nobody bothered to do it so in Nov of 2005 they finally dropped them from the label. (They had added them around Nov of 98 so they were on the labels for about seven years. They were never used on the bullion coins and maybe only briefly on the classic commems. If they were it was just during part of 2005. I seem to recall they were added to the classic commems just shortly before they were dropped completely. I could be wrong about that though.)
Yes Thankx Dave...I've often wondered what the Series/Coin designations meant. I thought I'd run across the meaning/definition eventually in my reading (never ends) but to date and beaucoup books into the hobby I've never seen an answer to the perplexing but unasked question..."wonder what this means?" Now I know...appreciate!!
No. NGC has their own idiocy - universal coin number that's actually alphanumeric and they don't publish an easy to use list. But they never tried to put it on the label like PCGS did....
