Howdy! I love learning about coins and grading is an important part of that. I have been wanting to buy a 1921 Peace Dollar for a while now and so often have several in my watch list, waiting for the perfect one in my price range. This one struck me as over graded though. Could it really be graded AU 58? I thought NGC was pretty good, but this one....
Honestly it doesn't look AU to me at all more like XF45 as a maximum not seeing luster by the pics but these are tricky and its not one that would fit me.
Not really great pics. 21 peace dollars had terrible strikes and the hair almost always looks very weak
Back in the '50s, doctors used to be 'Gods' and could do no wrong. Well that has changed. TPG are in that phase now, in my opinion. They are guessing, with lots of experience, but it is still just a guess. This is why I don't send my collection in for grading. I collect because I like the coin, whether it's in a slab or not. Sorry, feeling kind of negative this morning, but that's how I feel.
According to Roger Burdette in his Red Book on Peace Dollars, the early strikes had better detail and definition, but the die life was poor. So, Morgan ordered that the dies be used longer and at lower pressure which resulted in the coins having less sharpness and detail. The grading services do not lower the grades because of the strike. Less detail does not change an AU coin to an XF coin or an MS coin to an AU coin.
Certainly subjective, and certainly not consistent, maybe not guessing, but definitely not something any one company has down to a science. Two are better than most. Why bother though if you are not looking to sell? If you are an educated buyer, most of the time you should be able to do well without the plastic.
You indicated you are not a believer, I would agree based on those pictures. I personally would not buy that coin even if the grade was XF. Not something I would be happy with over time. I would rather save up a little and buy a more eye appealing coin.
No one (shouldn’t anyways) claims that grading is an exact science, it’s not and never will be and that’s fine. They certainly aren’t guessing and some people are much better grading than others. There is a lot that can be learned from the TPGs though
Agree with most of what you said and maybe all of it. For those less experienced members can you explain for the average collector, what are the top three learning take-away's from TPG's? Lets define average collector just to put boundaries in place. Someone that spends more than $1,000 and less than $3,000 per year on buying coins at local shows and maybe one major show every few years. Can the same average collector get the same experience from buying raw coins in the same environment? My definition of average collector may be higher than the actual, but I wanted to give an example of a collector that is likely to be exposed to enough slabbed coins to actually gain insight. Not disagreeing, just trying to see what you or others feel are the learning opportunities.
I won’t do a list but the biggest thing is often when someone thinks they’re way off to start asking why. Almost always there’s something about the series that the collector just isn’t aware of that makes them think it’s so insanely off, they really are basically never inanely off besides a mechanical error. There’s also a big lesson too with pictures where you can grade to an extent, but picture grading is a fools errand for trying to condemn the TPGs for the most part. You can make a coin look a 1000 different ways in pictures and get different answers every time. Raw coins depend what you’re buying. Raw coins are the biggest traps overall when talking about something of value. Many dealers crack details coins and sell the coins raw at their local or regional shows/shops unfortunately and of course the biggest issue is that if you don’t know you missed an issue you won’t know. Is every raw coin bad, no but anything of numismatic value should be highly suspect from a buyers standpoint. It’s like anything else in collecting, there’s not one answer to anything and doing x could be better than y in a situations but that doesn’t mean it always is.
I would have said it differently: 1. It should help you train your eye to the differences between grades especially when going between MS to AU, AU to XF, etc. 2. It helps to train you eye to certain types of surface detail issues that you might miss on a raw coin if you don't know to look. 3. for online sales you are much more likely to get what you hope for when buying slabbed because as you stated, pictures are almost never a good representation of the coin you will be getting, intentional or not. 4. for high value coins, the TPG helps better set the stage for a fair price negotiation. If you put the time in and are looking at the actual coin, I think raw coins can offer the best opportunity to buy under value. As you said, they also represent the biggest risk. I do agree that TPG's are necessary and provide a great opportunity to learn if you are buying regularly.
At the end of the day though, as a collector you need to learn to trust your own eyes and grade the coin and not blindly accept what is on the slab. When looking at the OP's pictures I can only assume the coin in question does not warrant the grade shown.
I think there is a lot to be said to this. If the original poster is asking for opinions to the accuracy of the grade, I am betting he/she is not fully satisfied with the eye appeal. If that is the case, for me it would be a strong pass. I know, I am vain, but my collection is all about original eye appeal and what I like to see in my collection. If I have to ask about it, it will likely not be good enough for me to purchase. If I was the original seller, I would most certainly pass, despite the grade.
Sorry, but that is not an AU 58 coin, based on those pictures. It looks like much more wear than AU, is lusterless, and has minimal eye appeal. I think it looks more like XF 40 to me, and that coin simply would be a hard pass for me. Major grading fail, unless the coin looks much better than those pictures.
I don't like the appeal of this coin either. My main reason for posting this was to ask about the grade. I thought that it was way over graded, not just by a few points, but really over done. Is it possible that someone switched out the original graded coin for a lesser one? Or is it common for even grading companies to occasionally mess up? I like to look at what grading companies grade coins, and really dislike when private sellers attach grades on 2x2 flips. Ultimately, I buy a coin because I like it, not for what someone tells me it is. Now here's a "sad" story for you... I once owned a 1921 Peace dollar that had a lot of detail and was a very nice coin, minus the cleaning it suffered. I bought it for $100 and after a year, sold it for $100. Nothing lost, but I sure wish I had kept it!
Looks XFish to me from the picture. Buy the coin I suppose. I have a 1921 as well, let me try and find the picture, looks xf but also got a AU53-55 grade but I like the look of the coin
