I agree with the grade, it is clean. I thought the luster was subdued and the O was weak where normally you see the marks at. I was not sure if they would have saw the spots, still not sure how to tell what might appear after grading. To me the luster was my deciding factor.
Mark, Planchets from the early years have a very different look from latter years. Sometime in the late 40's I would guess they changed the way the planchets were handled and as a result the later coins have a more planchet defects in weakly struck areas. Or at least that's always been my impression -- I'm hardly an expert in the series or mint procedures.
As an aside, take into consideration the master die from these early years had so much more detail than later. LOOK AT THE BEARD! You never see that kind of detail in Abe's beard on a wheatie in the later years.
Is that a scratch on the reverse running parallel to "Pluribis"? Looks almost big enough to body bag a coin.
nice coins. I love the early lincolns for the reason mentioned above. Early Lincolns have so much more detail
Tough call, virtually hit free, I don't think they deducted much for the spots. Low luster may have dropped it to 63....I'll roll the dice.
Given the impaired luster, spotting and what I consider a weak strike for an '11-S I went with 62. Given the lack of contact marks a 63 wouldn't surprise me.