The Morgan Re-Grading Challenge Part I

Hello Friends Old and New,

This is an Intro to the Morgan Re-Grading Challenge Part I. What is this you ask? First you need a background story. Many, many moons ago a young stupid me started to crack all my coins out of the slabs and put them in books.... you know, Morgans, Walking Libs, Peace dollars, Franklin halves all the way down to quarters, dimes, nickels and cents. For some of you older guys you may recall some posts about this many years ago here on CT. I tried to collect raw when I could, but sometimes I got a good deal on a slabbed coin and bought it. Well, as the years continued, so did my habit of cracking coins out and putting them in books. The books looked incredible. People would ooh and aah over them and this made me feel proud. But then I got to the point that I needed some higher end coins and I had to make a decision to sell off parts of my collection to fund these new purchases. And what did I find out....you guessed it....raw coins are not as valuable as slabbed coins. Now the loss of money hurt but I justified the loss by the time spent being the custodian of the coins. Some losses were great, but the Good Lord has blessed me and I was able to absorb the losses. Now I am at the point where I have sold off nearly all my collections to focus on two big collections - my Morgans and Walking Libs. As I slowly age, you start to think of things down the road such as how am I going to divest my collection and who is going to get it? A while back I started to realized that I will have to eventually spend some money to get the coins regraded or just sell as is. Taking a loss on a Washington Quarter is nothing compared to taking a loss on a 1893CC Morgan for example. That would be a biggie so I made the decision to set aside some money and send all my Morgans back into PCGS for "Re-grading". This is not a cheap en-devour so the lesson here is unless you have tons of money or just don't care....don't crack the coins out of the slabs!!!! You will lose in the end.

This is where the challenge comes in. Out of the 40 coins that I am sending back in (All Morgans by Mint Mark, plus major varieties from 1878-1886), only 12 were purchased raw. So a majority of coins were graded by third party graders. 16 were graded by PCGS, 8 by NGC, 3 by ANA/ANACS and 1 by ICG. I want to see how accurate PCGS is in re-assigning the grades to the coins...especially theirs. I also want to see how well I did when I purchased those 12 coins and did I buy correctly. I did this a while back with a few of my commems that I cracked out and was trying to resell. Some of you may remember my post about this. Some grades got bumped, some lowered but most stayed the same. 2 of those commems came back cleaned when they were previously graded. Ugh, That sucked. So the first batch of Morgans is packed and ready to go out in Monday's mail. When I get them back in, I will share with all of you the final results. Then I will send out round II which will be 1887-1921 Morgans and later post those results. Thanks and wish me luck!

 

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Much luck upon you Joe.......good to see ya posting again.........

 

May your grades be high and your coins uncleaned!

Chris

 

I just hope that you can get that many coins graded accurately. From the threads here on C.T. lately, that's asking allot. Good luck.

 

Best of luck!

 

Sounds fun. Good luck.
I did the same thing at a younger age. It could be tough to find something nice that was raw. If something nice in a slab, popped up, I just had to have it for the album. It was a lot of fun. I'm also paying for that fun in the way of grading fees. I'm still happy.

 

I know your pain Larry. That is a good way of looking at it..."Paying for the fun in th way of grading fees".

 

You should try to find a bulk sub to piggy back on. It takes longer but only costs $5-10 per coin depending on grade and $0 for body bagged coins that come back cleaned or details

 

Good luck!

 

How many subs do you need to qualify for a bulk sub?

 

100

 

Hmmm I could easily hit that with all my Morgans and some Walkers that I could send in. I will look into it on Monday. Thanks.

 

Has to be the same series I believe. I know someone who does them for Morgan's. I'll see if he's doing one soon or not that you can piggy back on.

 

I wonder if there is a max value per coin.

 

Max value per coin depends on the bulk deal that the submitter has with the grading service. I've done bulk submissions, and the maximum declared value is $300 per coin.

 

I wish you all the best and good luck.

 

Anxiously awaiting your results.

 

Maybe you will get a bump or two and it will help make up for your losses. At the very least your collection will all be in the same holders. Good luck.

 

That was also another reason for doing this. I'm crazy like that. Lol.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

OK gang, I know its been a while but the results are in. As a refresher, I resubmitted my Morgans dated 1878-1886 to PCGS for grading. (See story above as to why I broke them out) Since the majority of these were previously graded, it would be interesting to see how well PCGS did matching up the grades to the previous grades. Here are the results.

Previously Now
1878 8TF PCGS MS64 PCGS MS64
1878 7/8 NGC MS64 PCGS MS64
1878 Rev78 Raw PCGS MS64
1878 Rev79 Raw PCGS AU58
1878-CC PCGS MS63 PCGS MS63
1878-S NGC MS65 PCGS MS64
1879 PCGS MS64 PCGS MS64
1879-O PCGS MS62 PCGS MS63
1879-S Rev78 PCGS MS63 PCGS MS63
1879-S Rev79 Raw PCGS MS65
1880 PCGS MS64 PCGS MS64
1880-CC Rev79 PCGS MS64 PCGS MS65
1880-O 80/79 PCGS MS63 PCGS MS63
1880-O NGC MS62 PCGS MS62
1880-S 80/79 Raw PCGS MS62
1880-S PCGS MS65 PCGS MS65+
1881 Raw PCGS MS62
1881-CC ANACS MS63 PCGS MS64
1881-O Raw PCGS MS62
1881-S PCGS MS64+ PCGS MS65
1882 PCGS MS64 PCGS MS65
1882-CC Raw PCGS MS62
1882-O Raw PCGS AU58
1882-O/S ICG MS62 PCGS MS62
1882-S NGC MS64 PCGS MS64
1883 NGC MS65 PCGS MS65
1883-CC Raw PCGS MS63
1883-O ANACS MS63 PCGS MS63
1883-S ANACS AU58 PCGS AU53
1884 PCGS MS64 PCGS MS64
1884-CC Raw PCGS MS64
1884-O Raw PCGS MS64+
1884-S PCGS AU55 PCGS AU55
1885 PCGS MS63 PCGS MS64
1885-CC PCGS MS64 PCGS MS65
1885-O Raw PCGS MS63
1885-S Raw PCGS MS64+
1886 NGC MS65 PCGS MS64
1886-O NGC AU58 PCGS AU58
1886-S PCGS MS63 PCGS MS64

Overall I was extremely pleased. Fortunately, there was no big swings. I think the biggest swing was the 83-S which probably should have received at least a AU55. There will be a few that I will upgrade but the majority I will keep. Now I need to save up the $$$ to send in the other half of my Morgans. The fun one will be the 93-CC that I cracked out. Originally graded MS63 by ICG but could possibly get a bump or even a plus.