Hello everyone, Began organizing some of my coins and decided to do some research on the internet, just curious I have never had any coin graded before. So I came across the PCGS site on what to look for in grading. It shows pictures of what your coin could be graded as, unfortunately I tried to compare my coin with what they showed but...I'm still not sure. Looking for your opinions on what you might think this would grade at, I don't have a good way to post these pictures other than to use a regular camera so pictures might not be good. If you need clearer pictures I will try my best to take them again. Thank you
I'm assuming that you are talking about their photograph app? https://www.pcgs.com/photograde/ This is an excellent resource, but sorely lacking in explanation. The pictures are good, but don't really help people if they don't know what they are looking for. The photograde app also doesn't really help when looking at UNC coins, either. UNC coins are graded based on strike, luster, eye appeal, and contact marks; circulated coins are graded based on wear (and are thus much easier to compare to pictures) So, looking at your coin, I'm first looking at the high points (cheek, hair over the ear, eagle's breast), and I'm looking for wear. That will appear as a discoloration, flatness, or change in the luster. I don't see any, so that points us to an uncirculated coin. Next, I look at the strike. This is a bit tricky, because New Orleans coins are known for not having great strikes (this appears as some "mushiness" in the details, especially in the hair and eagle's feathers). Your strike appears typical for an O mint coin. The luster on your coin does not appear very strong, which will hurt the grade. It's a bit tricky to judge the eye appeal with the dark pictures, but I see a few spots on the coin, and that doesn't help the grade. Overall, it appears to be a fairly neutral eye appeal (nothing amazing, but nothing really negative either). Finally, the contact marks: contact marks, especially in prime areas, kill the grade of a coin. I see a few marks on the cheek (one of the most important areas), a few in the obverse fields in front of her face, a few scattered around the eagle. A couple of the marks are fairly large, but most of them aren't too bad. If you put all that together, you can come up with a grade. I'd call this one MS-63. This Strike, Luster, Eye Appeal, and Contact Marks method of grading is how I teach everyone to grade (I call it SLEC). I think it is extremely useful, and helps you understand exactly what's going on with the coin. If you want more information, and more detail, about how to grade coins, I highly recommend you buy a grading book. There are a few good ones, and if you do a quick search of recent threads you can find recommendations.
Thank you very much! Hope you don't mind but I copied and paste this for me to keep to help me when I look at other coins. Great explanation and easy to understand. So glad I joined this site!!!
