1921-S Morgan grading opinions

A nice Morgan, I would have thought the breast feathers on the reverse would have stood out more to get a good grade without the "cleaning".

 

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This coin is a great example to show the subtle difference between die polishing lines and hairlines for those who can't spot the difference at a glance!

 

Thanks for the very helpful post.

 

The coin looks as though it's got both die polishing and hair lines from cleaning. Look left of nose by stars, those vertical lines look to be die polishing, the lines on the devices look to be improper cleaning......sad, cause it's a nice Morgan

This.

 

cleaned

 

Nice enough coin, however incorrectly cleaned. Throw it in the clunker bucket.

 

Worth $20 in the dollar bowl.

 

IMO, it would not str8 grade...come back as AU details harshly cleaned.

 

If you want to learn about grading, may I suggest you purchase this? Read it, then when you are done, read it again.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Science-...pID=51AflCKooXL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

 

NEVER clean a coin. The "Cardinal Rule" of collecting. AU-48 is my grade for it due to marks of the coin being circulated. Did you know that cleaning a coin will make marks on it, depending on what type of material used in cleaning? I like the 1921 S-Morgan Dollars. The end of an era.

 

Advice to the wise (and the inadvertently - inexplicably? - foolish).

 

I'm sure you meant AU58...

 

OK, I know I am in for a verbal assault, but if you are not collecting coins for profit of any kind (even down the road, or even to get your original purchase price back) why not clean the coin(s). I like my coins to shine...brilliantly shine! Copper, brass, silver all clean and shinny. I know it decreases or ruins their value, but that's the way I like them to look. You all recommend collecting what you like (holed, black, toned, damaged, etc.). Well I like them to sparkle! So what's wrong with that?

 

There can't be anything wrong with that, since given the specific parameters you've laid out the only "variable" remaining is whether you personally like your own coins or not. If you aren't concerned in the least about engaging in any further transactions with the coins you own, then your appreciation of them is confined to the realm of the purely subjective and as such no one else's opinion counts and/or matters.

 

There's nothing wrong with liking what you like. What is considered wrong by almost every collector is taking a coin that has not been polished or improperly cleaned and ruining it by polishing it up. If polished is the look you like, there is a plethora of coins available on eBay that are in a state you prefer. The best part is, they can be found at a discount compared to unmolested coins.

 

Unfortunately in this case, while your statement about collectors not wishing to ruin coins by improperly cleaning and/or going so far as to polish them and your other, companion opinion regarding the fact that there is nothing wrong with liking what you like unavoidably results in an untenable situation of two separate logic trains being on an inevitable collision course. His collecting behavior cannot be deemed to be both o.k. and not o.k. at the same time, since that view puts it into a self-contradictory impasse.

 

My opinion may have been lost in my explanation. What I was trying to say is that it's ok to like a coin that is all polished up (everyone likes what they like). What is not ok is to polish a coin that is not already polished up. To ruin a coin to suite your collecting desires is not ok (in they eye's of a vast majority of collectors). That in no way states that what he likes is not ok. Especially when there are plenty of examples that have already been ruined by people polishing them.

There are people who enjoy collecting holed coins, yet they don't purchase coins and add holes to them to make them fall in line with what they desire. What @Jersey magic man had stated was taking a coin and cleaning/polishing it to make it look the way he likes it. His justification was that he would have no plans to sell or get rid of the coin. Just because you don't plan to sell a coin, does not mean that that coin will never have a future custodian (we all die someday). That future custodian cannot undo the damage done by a previous custodian.

 

Then there's that priceless, unforgettable (with Peter Sellers as an illiterate gardner hilariously mistaken for a genius) line exchange from the delightfully ironic movie "Being There", as in: Man:"Do you read?" Sellers: "No." Man: "Who has the time?"

 

Artistically-speaking you are clearly on rock-hard solid ground here, I have no doubt whatsoever of that. Of course we as numismatists and occasional amateur historians would love to protect all art from desecration for the continued benefit of our children and grandchildren in particular and for the ongoing edification of future generations of our kind in general. That being said, I would only wish to point out that in this particular case, and it is really just this one instance that we are speaking of here, it is not in fact the beginning of the end of the world that someone who just might be more aptly described as an accumulator than a collector manages for his own pleasure to quite likely cause possibly more than a slight bit of "structural damage" to the condition and subsequent numismatic value of whatever coinage he happens to gets his hands on. In the bigger picture, this is neither a tragedy nor a catastrophe, and I doubt in any case that this is the inauspicious beginning of some sort of alarming, impending trend. An example of a genuine, monumental artistic atrocity,on the other hand, would be the the destruction in 1945, via intentionally-set conflagration, of roughly half of the phenomenal painter Gustav Klimt's unquestionably priceless and obviously irreplaceable masterpieces by the German SS during their retreat in WWII, an act so extreme in its expression of unspeakably horrific cultural vandalism that it can't to this day even begin to be fully comprehended. I'm just saying it's all a matter of compared to what, and that is why, while wishing that ideally this one particular individual wouldn't feel the urge to need to scrub his coins to an artificially clean and shiny state, I can't get myself too worked up about him doing so either.

 

The OP said "Here's another Morgan I have that I'd like your opinions on. Grade? Value?" He asked for grade and a VALUE and harshly cleaning affects value.
Best collecting to all.