Hi Everyone, New to the forum and somewhat of a beginner and trying to learn as much as I can about collecting, and in particular, collecting Lincoln Cents. I'm working on putting together a toned set of brown / red and brown early Lincolns and have made some purchases already, but overall, I'm learning that true gems don't come up for sale very often and are not easy to find. One question that I have and I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but is there something about the 1957-D that makes is tone more than other years? Seems to me that toned examples for this year/mint are readily available. Also, target toned 1970-S seem pretty common, too. Is there something in the planchet alloy that would account for these year/mint makes to tone more than other year/mints? Are there any other years that tone more or would likely tone a certain way, like the target toned 1970-S? Also, I've read many discussions about which TPG service is better PCGS or NGC and one point that is usually raised is that PCGS grades stricter for some types and NGC for others. For Lincoln cents, it seems to me that PCGS is grading a little bit stricter as the population counts for high grade coins are lower for PCGS but I'd be interested in hearing whether anyone agrees (or not) with that generalization. Thanks much.
Up until 1959 Mint Sets were issued by the mint in cardboard holders like this one - And those cardboard holders were very conducive to toning. So there are a great many coins, often with spectacular toning, that came from those sets. 1958 sets in particular are very well known for having produced many stunning toned coins. The target toning that you mention is usually the result of coins having been stored in cardboard coin albums, which were and still are very popular among collectors. As for there being something in the alloy from specific years, no there wasn't. Some will agree, others will disagree. But the population numbers are a very poor indicator for several reasons. One of them being that until 2001 NGC would not even grade any US coin minted after 1964. So the population numbers, of modern coins, are greatly skewed for that reason all by itself, without even taking the other reasons into account. Another of the most important reasons that pop numbers are a poor indicator is that for about the last 10 years NGC has graded approximately 50% more coins per month than PCGS does. That allowed NGC to not only catch up to PCGS in pop numbers, but to surpass them. Bottom line, those for those 2 reasons alone, and there are several more, pop numbers should never be used to judge which company is better than the other. To be honest, in my opinion, it cannot even be determined which company is better than the other. In a general sense, both companies should be considered to be equals.
