Dear all collectors, I am having difficulties in identifying the differences in between a Specimen coin with a normal MS coin. Is there any Master could give your precious opinion on how they are different? For example for this coin: 1962 Malaya Borneo 1 cent SP64BN, I can hardly see any different with a MS coin. Please refer to the images in the attachment. Thank you.
I'm not familiar with the coins at all so I can offer no answers on how to tell one from the other. But what I do know is this, when it comes to designations like SP, that is often nothing more than a choice made by the specific TPG. In other words, it is not always indicative of the coin being an actual specimen coin in the way that most numismatists would use the word.
Exactly! For example, my avatar is the 1998-S Kennedy half dollar which was graded MS69 by PCGS. I have two of them. A few years later, PCGS stopped grading them MS and, instead, started using the designation, SP. Go figure! Chris
Going from my experience ( 52 years at that ) a proof coin had the subject frosted....A specimen coin has the background and subject in a reverse manner...The mint or unc set are just plain...Pics attached...Lincoln is proof...Kooka is Specimen...Once you know this it is eezy peezy....
A specimen coin, as it is usually referred to in numismatics is more like a trial strike than anything else - a test run. Minted just to see if the dies, pressures, etc etc, all work the way they are supposed to. It is done before regular production even begins.
So if i have misinformed, then all the catalogues , reference books, and anything else that people have learnt over the years are false..You will notice i have scanned the exact 1994 coin as stated earlier and have included the book which all of australia swears by ( like your red book ) .. This coin is also mentioned in the Krause world coin catalogue... You are saying that all the books have to be re written again when they say the opposite to what you do.. I suggest you ignore posts 2 and 3 as books cannot be wrong or else they would never have got published...okay??
Ya think ? Sorry to tell you this but you are dead wrong on that count. There are countless examples where books are wrong ! Would you like me to give you a couple ? I helped write this series of articles - http://www.coinweek.com/world-coins...rt-3-importance-primary-research-numismatics/ I suggest you read it.
Did you read the article I linked ? It proves, beyond a doubt, that info in catalogs, books, etc can be and is wrong. And all of the mistakes made in the Breen books mentioned by baseball in his post are well known and documented. But I'll give ya one more. Would you say that CNN is a reputable source ? That articles published by them cannot be wrong ? If you believe that, then you should read this article - http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/08/luxury/dime-auction-2-million/index.html In it they claim that there were 2.5 million 1894-S dimes minted. And everybody here, including you I'm assuming, knows that isn't true. But yet that story and the bad information it was published by CNN. What's worse, other websites copied the bad information from CNN and then they published it too. One of which I got to retract their bad information and reprint their article with the correct information in it. And that came about as direct result of a thread here on CT. Bottom line, it is a stone cold fact that there is a lot of bad information, completely inaccurate information, about coins in books, articles, and websites. Just because something is published - that does not mean it is true. So how does one determine what is good and what is bad ? Simple, you have to know more than the person than who wrote the bad information. For only then can you recognize that it is bad.
