We make our way to coin four. It used to be a slightly older (blue label) PCGS and is now in a new PCGS holder. Please guess the grade from each time. Note: both the HA photo and the TrueView is posted below.
I'm feeling this one as a MS-64 and they stayed consistent with it and graded it MS-64 both times. It looks like the luster is a bit subdued with just enough contact marks.
Where are all the guessers? Thumbs up for those of you that commented already! @Morgandude11 @KSorbo ...I'll let this one go for a while longer
65 both times. It is clearly a gem grade coin, with attractive toning. Could it have gotten a bump to 65+? Definitely, but I will be conservative. If they went lower than 65, then they blew it. Should sell for a solid toning premium. That date is not often found with beautiful toning, and is a less common o mint date for toning, altogether.
And for the reveal... this one was a bit of a surprise. It started as a 64 and upgraded to 64+....my first ever plus grade! Being a New Orleans mint Morgan, the luster isn't as strong as the San Francisco examples (as @KSorbo pointed out). So that likely prevented a gem grade. Why did PCGS give the plus? I'm not sure. This is a harder date/mint mark combo for color but I don't think the color was as strong as a number of others that did not get a plus. I'll take the win though and it will help make the cost of this one more bearable (wasn't cheap given the difficulty of finding good color on this date). Here is the HA photo (no photo of the new holder as that would give away the GTG for the last coin).
