NOTE: A second set of photos are shown in a post below..... Another one where there's no right or wrong answers. This coin was purchased and remains raw. Please provide a grade for this coin, and disucss how you arrived at the grade. Have fun & Happy Holidays...Mike
Absolute best is MS63, quite likely a 62. Way way WAY too many bag marks to be considered for MS64. A little softly struck in the hair above the coronet, and behind and above Liberty's ear. Stars 1, 2, and 3 lack detail - most of the others are pretty good. Reverse is pretty solid. Very nice cartwheel luster.
If not for the big dings on the obv, I would say 63, but my guess is 62. Nice fields on rev, so Obv 62, Rev 64
MS60. To beaten up/worn for a 62. Not worth more than melt. Fills a hole in the 7070 gold page but I don't see a benfit in paying $30 bucks for slabbing.
I don't know a lot of gold and I'm too lazy to get the ANA book out, so I'm gonna guess. I guess AU-58. Here's why I come to that, by guessing. Please correct me if I am blatantly wrong.
I'd have to go with AU55. There are luster breaks on all of the high points both obv & rev. that indicate light wear. And there are several spots on the coin where it appears that the detail has been flattened from wear instead of not being fully struck up.
A pretty wide variance on grading opinions ! All the way from AU55 up to MS65 ! So I'm dying to know - coin in hand, are those flat spots on the obverse wear / luster breaks or just soft strike ? Your thoughts, Leadfoot ?
900fine, I'm not really sure. Part of me wants to call those areas cabinet or stacking friction, but another part of me wants to call it high-point wear. To make things even more complicated, clearly the obverse has some strike issues centrally. I think this coin is either a high-end AU (55 or 58) or a low end MS (62 or 63). I would probably lean towards a 62 because there's no real luster imparement in the fields. But I truly don't follow this series enough to feel confident in my assessment. The coin was purchased raw on eBay a few years ago, something I would likely not do today. I paid about $40 over melt for it...luckily gold was a $420 at the time -- there's nothing quite like rising bullion to overcome grading shortcomings. Anyway, thanks to everyone for their grades and comments. I appreciate it and hope you all enjoyed it...Mike