1891 O Morgan for grading (Part 3)

I see not a thing wrong with your method. Yes, one might do something which looks like "grading on a bell curve" with - for instance - New Orleans Morgans, but only after discerning whether the coin was weakly-struck or not. A coin's grade, to an extent, must answer to "what the best the die can produce" might be. Up to a certain grade level (above 65) where one must begin measuring against "perfection." At least from my viewpoint, strength of strike should be a major starting point for every coin evaluation.

The coin here is well struck from a New Orleans standpoint, but I'm still factoring what I see around the ear/hair when calling it AU55.

 

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So basically a coin that some unfortunate soul breathed on wrong? If they can go MS, why even call them AU? If the line between AU-58 and MS is so thin that making the differentiation is only a suggestion, why not call all AU-58's MS? Getting an AU coin stuck in an MS slab does not make it MS. It will have always have wear, making it forever an AU coin, regardless of what the incompetent grader calls it. Saying otherwise is ludicrous. Unless, of course, you only care about the monetary windfall and don't care about giving a collector your AU coin that magically became graded MS.

Disclaimer: I am not calling myself more proficient at grading than professional graders. But if I am going to pay some exorbitant fee for a grader to determine correctly if there is wear, then I bloody expect them to be able to get it right. If not, then they should not be in the grading business. And if one of my AU coins is graded as MS, then I will sell it as an MS because very few care to question the TPG grade.

I agree for the other two. They max out at AU-55. The obverse of the one in this thread is a 58 in my opinion, but the reverse will hold it to a 55. I will get Bill Fivaz's opinion when I see him tomorrow. He may prove me wrong.

Learning how to grade AU Morgans is very difficult because there are always very few certified AUs on a bourse floor, and all the raw ones are usually overgraded. As a result, I have to pull from standards for other series, which magically and conveniently don't apply to stupid Morgans.

I am almost tempted to end this argument by drilling holes in all of the coins. That way we would know for sure that they are no longer AU.

 

I thought you sold them already.

 

Your responses are very childish. I am saying that the coins are AU, based on discernible wear. It isn't a case of someone "breathing on them," all three were lightly circulated. What exactly is the problem? They are low to mid level AU coins. If you don't believe the opinion of several experienced collectors that all of them were in the AU 50/55 range, then you should have sent them in for grading. I gave you specific reasons for my grading opinion, and stand by it. You sold them for a profit, so it is really a moot point, unless the new owner wants to submit them for grading. They were lightly circulated AU coins, and I stand on that, based on seeing observable wear on all three examples.

 

Not tooting my horn. I'm just trying to help with the grading.

 

Luster example.

 

Ignore

 

Bill Fivaz's in-hand opinion was that they were all MS (I disagree), but apparently, what do I know?

If anything, that shows that these coins are not AU-50/53.


Last time I disagreed with Bill on a Morgan, he turned out to be right.