Hello. I have been looking at prices on these, and they jump around WILDLY, even among the same conditions. I was wondering if there was something I'm missing here, some other factor I don't know about? 1896 Morgan Silver Dollar "O" minting stamp on back. I will post 16mp images at a later time, but the coin appears to be between VG and F condition, comparing it with others. Has smooth flat wearing on the face, and smooth consistent wear on the center of the eagle.. All lettering is legible and proud, "LIBERTY" on the face is clear. Back of the coin is worn flat, but the face of the coin has beveled edge still. I am also fairly certain this coin has never been cleaned, so thats good. Deep tarnishing around the raised areas, almost blackened, and the coin face is tarnished a lot. The raised portions are slightly shiny, due to obvious wearing. I've seen coins on ebay go from 25$ to the thousands of dollars. I understand the sharp jump when coins are minty fresh, but why the huge disparity between coins of the same grade and mint? Thank you for any help you can provide!
the '96o is one of those out of step coins. very common in grades up to AU and then MS examples are very scarce. must be no bags were set aside over the years as with many other date/mintmarks. I have a whole write-up on just that coin from Numis News from about 5yrs ago. also many were weakly struck so even some MS coins don't look all that good so a well struck MS coin brings big bucks. I have a graded MS61 that if you compared to a lot of other dates you would think was an AU coin.
Besides the fact that most of the 96-O's were circulated and were weakly struck, they were also known for having very poor luster. Chris
