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Message:: [QUOTE="johnmilton, post: 3581540, member: 101855"]I am a type collector, and one of the "sleepers" in the U.S. gold type set is the Type II Liberty double eagle (1866 - 75). This coin has the motto, "In God we trust," on the reverse, but the value is defined as "TWENTY D." instead of "TWENTY DOLLARS" as it is on the Type III Liberty Double Eagle. This type is not rare or scarce overall, but it is hard to find in strict Mint State. The coins were too valuable to pull from circulation and put in a collection "back in the day," and none of them have been recovered from shipwrecks like the SS Central America. Here is the coin in my collection, an 1873, Open 3 Double Eagle. This piece is graded PCGS MS-63 and for that reason I paid a strong price for it at auction. Another, almost identical piece in the same auction sold for similar money. A few years ago, any Mint State grade higher than MS-63 was very hard to find and MS-65 graded pieces were virtually impossible. [ATTACH=full]955568[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]955569[/ATTACH] A little less than a year ago, I was thumbing through the Greysheet. I shocked to find the bid on this coin had dropped to less than half what I had paid. What happened? I knew that the coin market was down, but was it down that much. After doing some searches on the Heritiage auction site, I got my answer, "grade-fltion." Here are some obverse photos of the coins that have been selling at the much lower prices. All of these coins are graded MS-63. The reasons for the lwer prices are a weaker market, in part, but the main reason is that you don't get what you used to for the MS-63 grade. All of these photos are courtesy of Heritage. [ATTACH=full]955572[/ATTACH] This coin had a CAC sticker [ATTACH=full]955573[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]955574[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]

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