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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Burton Strauss III, post: 2897816, member: 59677&quot;]Uncirculated as a description has fallen out of favor, in part because of the ambiguity.</p><p><br /></p><p>The current term is &quot;Mint State&quot; or MS. Means as it came from the mint, with no detectable wear.</p><p><br /></p><p>The cartwheel effect and &quot;shiny&quot; itself is one sign of MS, but especially on smaller coins can be much less visible.</p><p><br /></p><p>The best way to tell is to learn the highest spots of a given coin series and look carefully for wear on them.</p><p><br /></p><p>For example, on a Morgan dollar, the breast of the eagle is one of the highest spots and will show wear first. One learns to distinguish that from a weaker strike - if the strike is weak, then metal flowed less (but uniformly less so) into the high spots. It&#039;s knowledge gained by looking at many coins.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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