Nice! I'm with GD on this one...I'd go 65. The fields look great with minimal bag marks on the cheek, and a pretty nice strike for an O mint.
O mints are tough. What would grade MS65 for a New Orleans Morgan dollar may only grade MS63/64 for a San Francisco minted coin. Why? New Orleans had sloppy quality control compared to the other mints. As for your coin, I agree with GD...and is that toning I see on the obverse?? If it is, you then have a nicer coin.
Of the Morgans minted at New Orleans, the 1885-O is one of the easier coins to find with a decent strike such as this coin exhibits. As for the grading, I agree, it could go MS65. What held me back was the long vertical scratch just to the left of the chin on the obverse. Hard to tell without seeing the coin in person. MS64 or MS65, its a beautiful coin as a Old Dan put it "a keeper for sure!"
that is not a scratch but a die crack. It is raised on the surface not into the surface. Thanks for all of your opinions. I am going to get it slabbed just for protective purposes and then put away with the rest for college fund. With 2 daughters 2 years apart, I have to put all I can away for it.
nice coin. O's are like they said, but i'll bet you get a 63 for it. unless you send it to a dump of a service.. might get a 69 then
Mint state coins are graded on their mint lustre, the quality of their strike, the state of surface preservation and their eye appeal. Let's take a look at each of these areas for this coin and how a grade on the Sheldon scale is assigned... Surface Preservation - the most important areas to examine on a Morgan dollar obverse are the face and date. In this case, the face has a decent number of contact marks from rubbing against other coins in a bag or roll, but no major detracting bag marks can be seen. There does appear to be one or two minor nicks on the cheek, but they are not overly obvious. The date area looks clean as well. Examing the fields of the coin there is a noticeable die crack to the left of the chin, and this is in this case a detracting factor (although a minor one). Other than that, there are precious few marks. The rim and the area around the legend and stars also look good. On the reverse the most important area is of course the eagle's breast and then the remainder of the eagle's body. In this case, although it is hard to tell from a photo, the eagle looks devoid of any detracting marks. There does appear to be a mark of some kind near the arrow points and it may be another die crack, but it is hard to tell from the photo. Aside from marks, we also need to look for hairlines, evidence of cleaning and/or handling, all of which seem to be absent in this coin. There are a few black spots on both the obverse and reverse but I am hoping these are not marks on the coin. Overall, on a scale of 1 to 5, the state of surface preservation for this Morgan Dollar would rate a 4. Lustrel - here we are judging how mint lustre for this coin, both obverse and reverse, stacks up against the known characteristics for the 1885-O. Although it it hard to tell from a photo, it looks to me like this coin is blast white with what I would expect to be a beautiful cartwheel and probably and a darn near mirror like reverse field. The only problem area is Liberty's cheak where we see breaks in the lustre from contact with other coins. Overall, comparing this to other 1885-O's I would assign the coin a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5. Strike - the 1885-O is not one of the weaker New Orleans dates (such as the 86, 87, and 88 New Orleans strikes) so we cannot consider this a strong strike for the date. We can however consider it just a bit about average. In looking at the quality of the strike on the Morgan Dollar, the key diagnostic areas are the hair above the ear and the eagle's breast. On a scale of 1 to 5, the strike is going to merit a 4 as well. Were this one of the weaker New Orleans dates, I would go a little higher. Eye-Appeal: Here we get real subjective and taking into account a variety of factors, assign the coin a grade on a scale of 1 to 5 based on most importantly - the absence of presence of toning and the balance of any toning. In this case, we are lucky in that the coin is blast white! Assigning a subjective grade to a toned coin is much more difficult and could easily be disputed amongst even expert graders. In this case, without seeing the coin in person (and realizing that is highly unlikely that a 5 would be assigned to a coin lacking any toning) I give this one yet another 4. So, how do I arrive at an MS64 designation from these numbers? 1. We recognize that surface preservation is the most important factor in determing the grade so we weight the result by multiplying it by two. Therefore our 4 becomes an 8. 2. Next we add all of our numbers together - coming up with a total score of 20. 3. Now we look at the ranges for the different mint state grades from 60 to 70: 5 to 12.99: MS60 13 to 13.99: MS61 14 to 17.49: MS62 17.5 to 18.99: MS63 19 to 20.49: MS64 20.5 to 21.99: MS65 22 to 22.99: MS66 23 to 23.99: MS67 24 to 24.49: MS68 24.5 to 24.99: MS69 25: MS70 So based on a review of the photo alone, this coin is assigned a grade of MS64. In person, it is possible that it may grade higher. For those interested in learning more about grading mint state coins using the method above, purchase a copy of How To Grade U.S. Coins by James Halperin. And, realize that this method is meant to hone ones skills and in some cases, to support a more subjective and immediate grade. In other words, when initially said the coin grades an MS64 I took all of these factors into account - I did not go through and compute them. Only herein, to explain the grading process and how one might arrive at the grade I assigned, did I show this computation. Hope this helps everyone.
cdcda - That's a great explanation of MS grading. It's good to see you getting a little more active again,. Keep it up.
Sorry old friend I meant to post this for the other day. No need to look for the book - unless you prefer it. The entire book is available on-line - Coin Grading
Thank you Doug, if I had been think I should have known to look at Heritge Galleries for this issue. Got to get off a order tomorrow and then sit back and start reading. A good way to spend a few evenings on the porch, and watching the young calfs look for their mothers. Yep, it's that time of the year already. Thanks again, I appreciate it,
You have to love the Internet and those that are willing to publish an entire book online. Personally though, I would recommend purchasing a copy as well, doing so supports the author and encourages others to write quality books such as this.
