rims came from the mint ...that hammered and scratched up? I also see PMD on the Eagles right hand feathers. I pulled one out of my poker bucket (we use them at poker games) and it has a better rim, and no feather gouges. Im still learning here. And will keep learning forever.
71 is AU...friction on all the high poit's of the obverse...you can tell by the different color. The fields look great, there's a lot of hits tho. The 74 S is haze... @Conder101 would love to here your theory.
I think MS-65 is a reasonable grade. You don't see them this nice very often. I've gone through rolls and can't recall a nicer one.
Put the glasses back on. That one wouldn't rate any higher than a '62 on a good day and a high AU on a bad one..........
the 71 looks worse then the ones we literally toss into the poker pot for the past 10 years....I am really confused!
I seriously doubt that's wear on it. It'll come off in isopropyl alcohol. It's a decent strike and other than a little chicken scratching around the date and tiny marking elsewhere it's fairly clean. For a '71-P that's pretty good. I'm not suggesting it's a solid MS-65 by any means, merely that it should be as nice as some 65's already graded. It will lack the luster that some high grade examples have but this isn't related to wear but rather to haze, I believe. I admit I have very little experience with high end '71-P's but this is only because I can't find them. Would you still consider this coin so poor if it had BU surfaces? I believe such surfaces are under the haze.
Yes they could. These were big heavy coins and they got banged around a lot at the mint in the presses/tote bins/riddlers/counting machines, and the bags weren't handled with kid gloves either. If you ever really watch business strike coins being made you would wonder how there are any nice coins.
That is true, in fact from what I've been reading on these, a lot of times you will see ticks and scratches that can be attributed to pre strike. My only thing is that I see what I think is very light friction on the high points of the obverse. MS 65 is usually the line crossed to be considered GEM UNC...If there is no wear (and I'll trust @cladking on this one) then this is a 63-64 at best. To get a 65 on an IKE you have to have far fewer ticks, scratches and chick scratch. I will say that the the fields on the OP's 71 are in great shape for an IKE and being found in circulation it must not have been there very long.
For what it's worth, the coin looks much better in person. I have horrible trouble with lighting when I take photos. Actual coin has a lot more luster and doesn't look so nicked up. Another editorial comment, if you go to ebay, almost all of the brown Ikes have horrible haze on it. (Go figure, that's where I got mine, but I think my Houston climate did them in too).
Don't forget, through all this splittn' hairs, over the 71, its still a nice coin...The Brown Ike is, well, like you said..like all the others...they all did that haze thing, at least eveyone I've seen has. **** WARNING DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME ****** I can't believe I'm going to admit this, and I would strongly suggest you not do this unless you really don't care about it, but I had a brown Ike once, back when I was new and still learning. I cracked it out of the case. took the softest fluffiest cloth I could find and whipped the haze off. All in all I only ended up with 1 small hairline that could be seen and it whipped off pretty easily. Let the flogging begin
So what would you rather have, ugly haze or a small hairline? Explains why the only ones I saw without haze were cracked open.
Why flogg you? If it helped you did good but if you would have dipped it in 50% water cut E-Z-EST for 2 seconds you could have avoided the hairline. Brown ikes are GREAT for practicing this method for future use on more expensive coins that could benefit from it the method is great for removing haze or light blotchy toning and also "permanent" fingerprints
Nearly every 1974-S Silver Proof IKE (Brown Box) has some for of haze on it and a good portion of the coins have some form of toning that starts at the rims and works it's way in. I do not know why. Nearly every Brown Box 40% Silver Proof Ike has some form of haze on them. 71-S's are usually shades of blue while 1972-S's can be blue's or greens. 1973-S's are usually bluish haze but most are clear. Since the various years have similar hazing/toning for specific years, it leads me to believe that something at either the US Mint or the Packaging processes was the culprit. As for the 1971 IKE in the original post? The Philadelphia Mint maximized die life and as such, dialed down the minting pressures. The net result was a larger than normal amount of annealing marks in the fields, near the rims and even on the Profile. Most folks interpret these as "bag marks" which they are not as these copper nickel coins are really, really hard. Scratching can occur but it has to be intentional and deliberate. Cotton Swabs and fingers have absolutely no affect on the surface of CnClad coins. My opinion of the OP's coin is an MS64 for sure. MS65 is tough but not impossible and the grader has to be in the right mood. I've got an MS66 that, IMO, isn't an MS66 and I, embarrassingly, paid a healthy premium for the coin. I'd lose my ;unch if I had to sell it due to the huge loss I'd suffer. If I had the OP's coin, I'd just stick it away with the rest of them in a 2x2 as the cost of grading far exceeds the possibility of PCGS awarding it an MS65. It's just too difficult to predict. For the Record, I totally trust @cladking 's opinion. He's very astute and very dedicated.
