How the heck do you grade these little suckers? I have 1940-45 P, D, and S all in about this condition. Most showing partial full to full bands on all three. To the naked eye they certainly look MS60 or higher. The dimes have a high luster and are extremely shiny. But zooming in with high magnification I can see hairlines in the fields. Just interested to get a ballpark of where they fall on the grading scale. Thanks
Welcome to CoinTalk. Your photos aren't bad, but they are too overexposed to be able to adequately grade the coin. I cannot make out where contact marks are, nor if the surfaces themselves are original (i.e. not cleaned, though I'm learning towards them being original). Mercury Dimes are hard to photograph in general, but if you are using the flash on your camera (which it kind of looks like in the first photograph), stop that. Proper lighting in numismatic photography is usually accomplished by providing overhead lighting to the coin by placing two lamps at the 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock position. For the time being, the most I can do is agree with your "MS60 or better" assessment. In the meantime, this may prove useful to you: https://www.pcgs.com/photograde#/Mercury/Grades
