Guess the grade? 1704 Half Crown R2 in Seaby

Stunned @ the grade and hard not to imagine some sort of an error as 1865, suggests.

 

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I think this is a great coin. I have a couple of Anne Shillings which would share the same hair characteristics of a halfcrown. Over here I would grade your coin as Good VF nearly EF. As others have commented, the reverse is better than the obverse. In the UK, we are more fixated about looks than third party graders or the potential of fraud that necessitates grading. Buying a high dollar item would involve sensibly research and knowing your dealer. It is really difficult to find good Anne Halfcrowns and this is a great one so take pride in its ownership.
Here is a graded coin I bought at auction in the USA last year, I would have bought it without the plastic slab or the quite frankly ridiculous description. From my image you can see the hair detail. I think $175 you paid for a couple of minutes appraisal and a $1 slab is ridiculous and expensive. I have bought a couple of "graded " British coins in the past in the full and certain knowledge that I was buying a bargain and fully intended to crack them open to give the grading judgment to whomsoever the eventual custodian would be after my time is done. My view of the coins at the time was that the grading was inaccurate, possibly because of lack of sight of other examples as I guess most of these guys spend the bulk of their time grading US coins that are generally post 1800.
Notable exceptions of course are people like Barry Murphy who grades ancients and handles thousands of them.

Here is the auction house description of my Anne Shilling.

Anne Shilling 1708 MS64 NGC, KM524.1, ESC-1147. Completely stunning for the typically shallowly engraved, low relief coins of this monarch, this fully lustrous near-gem is razor-sharp in every detail, the silhouette of Anne's face slightly doubled, and a singular glassiness seeming to drip from the dentils into the fields. An apricot color has further taken up around the devices, accented nicely by die polish lines, making this offering a true treat to behold.

Reads like a disappointing fine wine. They do acknowledge that they are typically "shallow engraved". In the final analysis, grading is subjective. I have read US grading books and am in awe of the science and complexity but it creates a dimension that I do not want to be part of.

 

I agree with the UK grading of Dafydd above as gVF/aEF.......yet a VF35 equates to a British Good Fine.....which is idiotic.

 

If you aren't happy with the slab grade, crack it out and just enjoy the coin for what it is. Unless your collecting interest is entirely determined by the number on the little piece of paper in the plastic holder, in which case I would argue that you aren't actually collecting coins, you'll probably be happier with it raw.

 

I live in economic reality. The little number is important, asp after pay 170 bucks for a valid appraisal which this is not.

 

And a point well made. The other thing is that for those of us that are not as young as we used to be have coins that may well have to be sold, and frankly the market now and likely to come is centered around grades - especially if it comes to sale through major firms in the USA and obviously increasingly so in the UK (despite all the protestations there). One has only to see auctions through Baldwins, Noonan's or even Spink to see this phenomenon.

 

I agree totally with 7Jags.....will think about a crossover to PCGS or a raw submission. When NGC grade modern Panda's they don't mess up as it's a 70, 69 or 68......so less room for error.

 

And this OP serves a value IMHO to those reading it - the TPGs are there as a service, but occasionally get not only a bit too full of themselves but also demonstrate fallibility; they are NOT Gods even though some think of them that way.

I have related some instances where their potential biases have come to the fore with regards to coins that were NOT mine. Stay patient & perhaps to try submission to the alternative service but don't worry if they too miss the mark. If that were to occur, and I know you didn't ask, but I would be tempted to break it out of any TPG holder and perhaps sadly go without.

Sorry about rambling but I remember another issue not broached on these boards with edge filing. For those that don't know, that is a means of altering the rim, sometimes ever so slightly. This is usually done post-minting by some to improve the appearance of their coin, but these usually have a particular appearance. The Royal Mint however were known to perform such "services" in the 19th and early 20th centuries on coins before the coins ever left the premises, and was usually very subtley accomplished; well, the TPGs seem to be blissfully unaware of this and pass down grades or non-grades accordingly.

 

That very well could be it

 

Bet that’s not on wheel of fortune

 

I’m back from the States now and have access to my library and would quote Jason Poe in his book “The. Art and science of grading coins”
He said on page 10
“Given a single coin, twenty graders can give you as many different grades: each considers different things appealing in a coin “
This is an interesting book that discusses the balance between the subjectivity and the objectivity of grading.

 

Maybe NGC should read it too!

 

Good Point !,

 

I still think it odd that my two e-mails on this issue were simply ignored, no response at all.

 

Welcome to their world. I once politely emailed them about an obvious error in their census and they were quite rude, doubling down on the error they had made.

 

I wonder if PCGS might be worth a shot

 

Not that you directly asked, but I probably would. They occasionally have their own issues as well though...

 

That is an extremely low grade IMO.
That is unless there isn't any luster.
But it looks from your photos to atleast be in the AU range.

 

That is the consensus........just crazy

 

I know this has been beat to death, but just as a reminder to those (not the OP) that this coin shows plenty of luster under the toning on both obverse and reverse and is notable for no wear in the fields with the high points not being struck up.
The bit about the fields is important as the coin will not have wear only to the high points without scuffing to them, but will affect the fields as well; the reverse is astonishing in its preservation.
Why don't you try posting over on predecimal and see what they say?