hone your grading skills -- braided hair large cent

If my first guess of MS60 is wrong, I'll say MS62

 

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Mike you sure are coming up with some nice coins. I am going to say AU58 but with the marks on the cheek I would call it a 55. I bet NGC called it MS64 RB?

 

You are correct. NGC graded it 62 BN....

My subjective opinion on the coin:

The coin is a nice AU coin. It suffers from a touch of a weak strike centrally on the obverse, but it also does have a touch of high-point wear. There is a spot near star #6 and a discoloring (which appears less in-hand) around the date, which both limit the grade. The ticks on Liberty's cheek are pretty well shown on the photo and also detract from the grade.

This is another example of a market graded coin -- an eample of what you sometime hear called an "AU 62". If you look at most AU coins, very rarely will you see mint red, so I think that NGC (in addition to their general overgrading) gave this coin the bump into MS as a result. I think you will find the majority of 62s are either nice AU coins or problematic MS coins and in both cases net graded -- a true 62 is a fairly rare grade, in my opinion, particularly outside of gold issues.

It is also interesting to note that if you look at the prices of these coins, you'll see the spread is fairly close between these grades, so it's not like the price doubles for this small bump in grade (an important factor when you look at net-graded coins (or any coins for that matter), and always be extra careful with evaluating coins that go up/down greatly with a small increases/decrease in grade).

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this thread and you all had a very happy Thanksgiving...Mike

 

p.s. here the 47 it replaced:

 

That doesn't suprised me at all that the coin is in a MS-62 holder. Certainly market grading at its best (or worst.....however you look at it). With the original mint red, the coin would always bring over normal AU money, even with the high point rubs.

It's a very nice coin!

 

Im thinking AU55 as well!

 

WOW - It replaced a really nice coin.

 

WOW, NGC MS-62. Can you post a picture of the the actual slab?

Take Care
Ben

 

Would you like to see the back too?

 

Yes thanks, both sides would be wonderful. I think, the look of a coin in it's slab is different from one which has been edited out and added to a black background.

Take Care
Ben