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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;sturmgrenadier, post: 770967, member: 18711&quot;]I migrated to cointalk.com because of the recommendation of a friend who similarly found the haughty, overspecialized discussion evident in some of the posts on the PCGS thread to be rather annoying and unfriendly to beginning collectors. It was a wise decision. People seem a lot friendlier here (the overall tone of the discussion is much less competitive, etc.), and I find more of the threads to be accessible to me as a beginner (who knows relatively little about coins). </p><p><br /></p><p>I was reading an uber-informative thread about lustre for beginner&#039;s earlier today, but was this techno-phobic dunce able to find it again using the search function (sorry for the overused rhetorical question)? That&#039;s why I started a new thread. I apologize in advance if my questions are dumb or were answered in said thread (while I found the thread very interesting, I didn&#039;t have time to read it in its entirety). </p><p><br /></p><p>I collect early commemorative coins and have about 15 PCGS graded half dollars (most in the MS-65 to MS-66 range with a few outliers in MS-67 or MS-64). Almost all of them have what could be described as &#039;good lustre&#039; (meaning that it is obvious to even me, a beginner, because the lustre on these coins is bright, brilliant, blazing. dripping [other adjectives could be inserted here] but I hope you get the idea]. A couple of them, an MS-65 Grant (sans star) and a MS-66 Columbia, SC, are oddballs, though, because the lustre on each doesn&#039;t look anything like the rest of their brethren. The Grant doesn&#039;t have any cartwheel lustre at all; it has this&nbsp; old-style (I think photographers call it sepia tone) light brown color that covers most of both sides of the coin. It isn&#039;t very lustrous. If I look carefully at the Columbia as I tilt it, I can see that there is a cartwheel effect on both sides, but the &#039;hot zones&#039; aren&#039;t very bright and the coin and the lustre is just plain more subdued. It just doesn&#039;t seem to have the lustre deserving of a relatively high grade like a MS-66 to my beginner&#039;s eyes (I know: I shouldn&#039;t have bought it if I thought it didn&#039;t look right<img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie3" alt=":(" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />, but cut me a little slack for being a beginner) Strangely enough, this coin has one of the green stickers, too.</p><p><br /></p><p>All of this brings me to my (actual) questions.....</p><p><br /></p><p>1) How can you tell the difference between a satin lustre and a coin that just has lousy lustre (either from the time it was struck [never had good lustre] or impaired lustre [it&#039;s been dipped away])?</p><p><br /></p><p>2) Is it accurate to describe a satin lustre as being subdued or impaired?</p><p><br /></p><p>3) Is it basically understood that a brilliant/bright lustre is more desirable to most collectors than a satin one?</p><p><br /></p><p>4) Are the two &#039;oddball&#039; coins in my collection that I described likely just cases of impaired lustre/problem coins that sneaked their way into higher grades when slabbed (because graders are not infallible)?</p><p><br /></p><p>5) Does absence of a cartwheel mean that a coin has likely been dipped? </p><p><br /></p><p>Thanks for bearing with my long post. I appreciate any answers that more experienced collectors/dealers can provide me. Thanks again.</p><p><br /></p><p>Richard[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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