Coinbuf

All GSA Morgans are liked by many Morgan collectors, I would grade this as MS62 or MS63. Full retail value in todays market is around $400-$500 if graded by NGC in the GSA holder.

A very nice coin and one of the better "common" CC GSA coins, I would say MS64 shot MS65. This is a coin that is worth sending in for NGC to grade, handy tip, send in the coin in the complete GSA holder. Coins graded in the GSA holder often bring higher resale value over coins not in a holder.

The coin dies wear over time as they strike more and more coins, you might find a very slight variation due to the die deterioration. In your photo the third coin from the left shows what is known as a ridge ring, most noticeable in the word trust. That feature is from a worn out die, so right away it is obvious that these coins come from varying die wear stages, that and the differences in centering noted by RWB can trick you eyes into seeing a different size than is actually there.

Welcome to the forum. First and foremost, hold any coins not in a holder of some type only by the edges, the oils from our skin will etch the surfaces of coins. Second, and most important is do not try and clean or improve any coins, you can find tons of "helpful" ways to "safely" clean coins on the internet. However much of that information is bogus and you could easily do some irreparable harm and reduce the value of the coins you have. Ebay can be useful to find some value information once you have some information about the coins, without knowing the grade and details of each coin you could search for years and find wildly different values. Also when using ebay be sure to only search the sold listings, some sellers can and do ask some outrageous prices hoping to find an unknowledgeable buyer. Coin values are tricky because a coin's value is determined by the condition of the coin, its grade, and the rarity of the coin. You can easily determine the rarity by looking each coin up in a publication called the red book. You can buy one or in many cases you can find one to checkout at a local public library. In this book you can find the mintage figures for every coin the US has ever minted, coins with very low mintages will be more rare possibly equating to more value. The red book also contains values for each coin by grade, however because this is a book by the time it gets published and distributed those values may not be entirely accurate. But it does help to point out which coins have high values vs low values. Another great resource for looking up information is here on the NGC website, known as the NGC explorer, here is a link to this tool. NGC explorer Now the difficult part is determining the condition of the coins you have inherited. If whoever left you the coin has also left any information on each coin, say a spreadsheet or perhaps some written information on any coins in holders, that would be a good starting place to determine the grades of each coin. Without any information like that it will fall to you to figure out the condition or grade. I would start by (assuming none exists) creating a spread sheet to catalog each coin by denomination, year, and the mint location each coin was minted at. Many inherited collections have a number of coins that were sold by the US mint in packages known as mint sets or proof sets. These sets, as a general rule, do not have great value because so many sets were sold and a great many are still available to buy, i.e. not rare. Another way to tackle this project is to contact a local coin dealer in your area and see if they are willing to provide an estimate for you of the coins. This will be the quickest way but with a word of caution, be wary of any dealer that is too quick to offer a buy price for your coins. There are coin dealers that pray on people that inherit coins and have not done any homework and have little to no knowledge of the coins they have inherited. If you have any questions on specific coins you can post your questions here, please try and provide us with good in focus, cropped photos of both sides of the coin you have questions about, we cannot really provide any information if we cannot see what you see. Best of luck and welcome to the coin collecting world.

You are justifying the price by trying to compare to other items, I am not. Justification helps people feel good about what they buy, but it does not make those items cheap. I have bought many coins that were cheap when compared to the same coin in another holder or with a sticker, but that did not make it any less expensive.

Of course you can, and I stand by what I said, gold is very expensive compared to any time in its history. Here is a 100 yr chart of gold prices, you can make all the excuses you want but gold has never cost as much as it does now. As this longer look shows gold (taking out the 80's bubble) was on an upward but flatter and controlled climb until 2006ish. Since then the price of gold has shot much higher in a very short timeframe when compared to its long history. I am not looking at gold in relation to other asset classes, yes the cost of living has spiked in the same timeframe as the gold price runup, and that has more to do with the price than anything else. Gold is finite but it is not rare, it costs more now to mine for gold which is the real driver of the higher price of gold than any other single factor. Yes I agree that gold prices are more likely to increase vs decrease, however that is the result of our government continuing its assault on the people of the US and the resulting hyper inflation we are suffering, not because gold is cheap in relation to other asset classes.

Funny I never thought of you as a serious collector.

People love a good song and dance.

Gold is very expensive when compared to the past eight years or so, see the chart Since the China flu boondoggle it has seen a significant rise, slight pull back, another spike and now a slight pull back. This is the irrational "run to safety" that some people choose in light of the economic and social events of the past two years. So any dealers and collectors who bought during the two spikes that want to sell now are not likely to discount because they bought at the peaks and will hold (if possible) until the right buyer is found or they are under a financial pinch and have to sell. That is why you are not very likely to find a "deal" on gold coins regardless of if those coins have any numismatic premium or not. Now the big question is will our dictator continue to spend like a drunken sailor and continue to push inflation unabated as we have seen this year. Or will smarter head prevail and provide solid financial guidance to curb the hyper inflation. If you can answer that question, you will then know if now is the time to buy or the time to wait.

It is very sad that you feel comfortable ripping off other people by selling something in this manor. Just because someone else is a crook does not mean that you should be one too.

No not counterfeits, notwithstanding Roger's usual misinformation on this subject, you may have noticed that Roger has a major chip on his shoulder about a few things in the hobby. What we are now talking about is Dan Carr and his moonlight mint operation. Moonlight Mint website Dan takes US coins (and maybe darkside coins, I'm not a follower of his operation) and will use those as planchets which he restrikes with new dies. On his website there is a gallery section where you can see several of the coins he has created, including some that mimic US mint designs but with dates the mint never produced, like a 1964 Peace dollar. You can see another example of his work towards the bottom of page 66 of the "love for copper" thread here on in the US, world, and ancient section of the forum, a copy of a Lincoln cent coin with a date of 1908-S. There are very avid collectors of his work, and there are a few (obviously) that have an axe to grind over his work. I personally don't collect his stuff nor do I care either way, I see his stuff as a form of art, certainly nothing to get worked up about.

I'm an educated man but I have no way of knowing who (or what) you read about last year. However, I know of no "kids" who own a Lincoln set that include the single highest graded Lincoln cent coin. I have never met Mr. Blay myself so I cannot say how old he is, but I'm very certain that he is not a kid.

Stewart Blay has an incredible Lincoln cent collection including the finest graded Lincoln cent, his 1919 MS69RD is fabulous.

Just to preface, I would not recommend or buy any of these three. 1) Commercial VF, but it presents as a cleaned and retoned coin for the photos. 2) Total POS, clearly polished details grade coin and only worth melt. Not a coin to buy for collecting unless your collecting goal is silver stacking. 3) Has XF detail but photos of coins inside 2X2's can be very deceptive and the coin has a scrubbed look to it imo.

Hope it works out for you @EagleRJO

Your name calling and insults only show how angry you are at being left behind by the rest of the hobby. Anyway you go ahead and continue to scream into the wind, after all your making such headway with your old days way.

Talk about self serving, you cannot accept that the industry and hobby have moved on and accepted the changes that you cannot.

Thank you for proving my point, you are not a coin buyer so you can hang on and romanticize your idea of grading even though it is woefully antiquated and out of touch with the reality. Coin buyers have to deal with the here and now, not what was 50 years ago. You are a wonderful researcher but you should stick to that, you actually do new collectors a disservice when you try and push old out of date information.

Does not look like a strike through from the photo, perhaps a lamination issue where that lam piece fell off before striking or simply a stain. Would need better photos to determine, however, to your question it is unlikely to be graded/holdered as a mint error if you did not pay for the service. If you want to have that service added I suggest you call NGC customer service on Monday and see if they can add that service to your submission.

That is a nice coin, the NGC explorer page that I linked in your other thread is a great resource for information on coins like this. Unfortunately, unlike your Morgan dollar the seller was rather optimistic with a BU grade as this coin has seen some light circulation or improper handling and would not grade higher than mid AU. Still a nice collectable coin for collectors that enjoy filling albums, just not the type of coin that will put much into the bank account.

First welcome to the forum! You have a very nice Morgan dollar with what most will consider eye appealing toning. I am going to provide you a link to the NGC explorer page for 1887 Morgan dollars, 1887 link Here you can find lots of information about this coin (and the other coins you have too) including rarity, pricing, photos, and some commentary. I agree with Bobby that this coin grades MS63 or MS64, and retail for a raw coin in this current market is $75 give or take. In your reverse photo you appear to be holding the coin out of the plastic flip, I caution you to take care when handling your coins and only hold them by the edge when handling them outside of a holder. The oils on our skin are acidic and will leave fingerprint marks that eat into and etch the coin's surface which will lower the value.

Fake, and don't be fooled by perfect or near perfect feedback on fleebay. Sellers can have negative feedback removed, and there are lots of sellers with great feedback that sell tons of garbage to people that have no idea that they have been taken who leave glowing feedback on the junk they buy.

The director needed a raise so he can still afford tacos on taco Tuesday.

What I'm saying is that you cannot apply a single image of a single grade across the entire production of each mint, compare an MS65 1881-S to an MS65 1904-O, the NO mint coin will (most of the time) have a far less impressive strike than the SF coin. On the NO coin the hair curls over the ear are often found very flat and the eagle's breast feathers the same due to an incomplete strike where the SF one will be razor sharp. If you were grading these only on a technical scale there is no way that both could receive the same grade, but under market grading the strike is de-prioritized and other factors like luster are given more weight, thus the higher grade for the NO coin which lacks the technicals. Keep in mind that I'm discussing MS grades here not circulated coinage, once you drop down into the circulated grades the strike quality is less of a factor. That is not to say that market grading and gradeflation have not impacted the circulated grading, they have. I am not a fan of the current market grading scheme and would rather see the grading move back to a more technical standard, but it is foolish for an active collector to ignore the realities of the market over a romance with the past. Market grading and gradeflation are real and anyone who is actively buying or selling needs to be aware. It's easy for Roger to ignore and rail against the current grading practices because he is not a collector, he has no skin in the game. If you follow his advice and make offers biased on using guides that are not current with the market, like the ANA guide for grading, chances are that you will be dismissed as a low-baller by some dealers. Like I said on your other thread you have to take the whole coin into consideration and not get hung up on just one aspect.

I agree that $400 is too much for a raw coin, I have seen MS62 NGC graded coins crossing the auction blocks for around $450 including one at Stacks last month. But these are the pitfalls of ebay, ebay fees are high and a seller can ask anything he wants, it is up to the buyer to decide yes or no.