So the Jolly Fat Man who wears Red and breaks into peoples houses once a year in the middle of the night every year stopped by and left a few trinkets laying around the house this year. One of which was a coin scale for me to get a better read on my coins. Naturally I read the instructions, calibrated the scale according to the directions, and used the provided 100g weight supplied for calibration. I weighed one of my Morgan Dollars, an 1880 and the weight came to be 25.36g. Looking at PCGS - it says normal weight should be 26.73g. I understand that coins "lose weight" based on how much wear the coin has seen. Does this coin appear to be more worn to account for the 1.37g difference? Or should I be worried that this coin isn't legit? The other Morgans I have weighed right in range of the 26.73g that they should be (+/- a few hundredths of a gram). Attached are the photos of the coin for your review.
Morgans have a weight tolerance of +- .5g. It is possible that your coin was struck on a rolled thin Planchet. Check the diameter.
That's normal. I just weighed two of my Morgan Dollars. One in Good condition (weighing 25.76 grams) the other in Very Good (26.05 grams).
You could look at it this way - the thickness of a Morgan dollar is supposedly 2.40mm. Your coin is 5% light. 5% thinner/lighter would be a 0.12mm loss, or 0.06mm on each side. Six-hundredths of a mm is tiny.
Yep. I agree. Taking into account the amount of wear along with a thinner than normal planchet and the accepted variance/tolerance allowed for the weight this seems like an authentic Morgan. Nothing about it indicates a fake. Looks like a nice 1880-O. But, because of the wear, you may have difficulties determining anything more than a basic VAM for it.
I haven't checked this chart but it's what I usually pull out of my back pocket to show yawl. Click to enlarge..... Here it is....................................................
That's what the literature says, but there can be exceptions. Got a Morgan in from fleabay a couple of weeks ago, I was highly skeptical. I weighed it on my scale, consistently weighed between 26.5 and 26.6 grams after 20 different tries. My scale is pretty accurate, uncirculated ones weigh 26.7 every time. I took it to the only respected coin dealer in town, he verified it as legit, and it weighed the same for him. He dragged out one of the pricey tester machines and made me an offer, even though I wasn't selling. I'm looking for that thread and will explain further in a new post.
