Morgan 1889 CC - Need estimates on Grade and Value

UPDATE: I took the coin to the expert I was talking about and he struggled with an exact diagnosis. He said the coin weighed slightly less than normal and was drawn to the the mintmark with his jewelers loop for quite sometime. His final conclusion was that he inclined towards forgery, but didnt say for sure. He said "I think its fake". The one thing that was clear was that the coin was unusual.

I dont know what to make of it so instead of wasting more money getting it verified by NGC Im just going to return it and put the money towards a different coin.

Thanks everyone!

 

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I would have made the same decision. Many don't seem to remember that some fakes from China didn't hit all of a sudden. There seemed to be large jumps in quality of these over time, and I could well understand that any TPG running into one with previously unknown markers could be fooled, especially as some on the forum figures they might only look at the coin for less than a minute, if that.

Jim

 

I dont think it's larger than the first, however the first seem ot appear to be at a slight angle..Something does seem off about it.

 

The toning gives it away, along with the mushy appearance of the stars and eagle, the CC is also a big prob because it's not hard to drop 90% silver solder on that spot and use a dremel/silversmith tools to grind out CC... the coloring looks as if it was dipped in some sort of acid/base bath to bring out the tone, and usually when that's done it takes fractions of a second so the toning will be odd if it's not done perfectly. If it was daytime I'd post my 1884 and 1885 philidelphia's to show the difference in a normal tarnish on a non-ultra-valuable morgan. my 1885 is covered in tarnish but the stars don't look bloated and there is no weird copper color to it, just black and silver. IDK how you get that tonage but it must be in the presence of some oxidixing agent other than moist summer ohio air. If that toning was real that coin could be worth a small fortune... but I think you're smart in not buying it. The guy who did it either did a great job or nature did a horrible thing to a beautiful coin, because it looked real to me for the first 10 min I looked at it, before I brought out my morgans.

 

Also, if you look at the C and then the second C they are at different angles... the center of the first C (which looks like a modified O) points straight and the second C, which is clear and correct in style, points slightly downward. To me it looks like it's an 1893-O with a very well done C added but at the wrong angle.

 

I think I know how they did the toning. If you look at the eagle, on the left wing there is a distinct point where it goes from toned to polished silver, and you can see a rim of some sort of liquid, as if it was stuck on some gum (the eagle), put on a stick, and dipped into the toning agent. The polish couldn't have come after the toning because of the obvious collection of toning material on the left wing of the eagle. Maybe I'm crazy but that's what it looks like to me, in which case this guy knew how to solder and grind, but had little toning experience. If he had dipped the entire thing, or if the toning was real, why would it have a rim?

 

Don't get too hung up on the different positions of each 'C'. I believe they were punched into the working die by hand...one at a time. Several Morgan varieties have different placed C's. Here is an image of the mint mark on an 1889-CC VAM 5 "Dropped C".
With that said, I can't tell if it's real or fake from the images. VAM 5 has a far date. The date on your coin looks to be in the normal position. I'm not aware of an 1889-CC VAM with normal date and that odd looking mint mark. I think the date digits look a bit odd in the image. Spacing between 88 looks wide.