Coinbuf

The state of the coin market is all the above at any given time and for certain segments of the market. The coin market moves and flows has ups and downs and is subject to the manipulations of both speculators/dealers and collectors. Some series come into favor and others fall out, white was king now color is, red was king now brown is sought, this too will change going forward. With regard to the specific passage you quoted Scott bought and held an item at the wrong time for too much and who's population likely increased (I did not read the article so that is an assumption on my part) all of which led to a decline of value. If you want to play in the deep end of the pool you have to accept that you are risking large losses.

That is called PMD, post mint damage; as noted not an error and has no value above the face $.01.

Sorry I cannot be of any help, I have submitted twice in the last year but as I am a collector (and those two submissions were not for resale of the coins) those costs are sunk and I did/do not care about tracking the costs. Overall there is no single number that can be defined as the correct breakeven point as too many variables are involved. Roger often throws out his $250 number as the baseline value for submitting, but Rodger is not a collector or dealer so that number is only relevant to him and not to anyone else. As has been noted the only number that matters is has the value been enhanced enough to recoup the costs of the grading process if selling is the end goal. For collectors who may have other goals besides an eventual sale the value enhancement may well be a secondary concern and thus not the most important concern. While I don't make a habit of this I too have submitted coins with sub $50 values because selling the coin was not the primary goal.

From your photos the 1880-S looks to have been polished again, but that aside the 1880-S is one of the most common Morgan dollars you will ever find. Because of the huge numbers that are available already slabbed there is no reason to ever spend money to slab one of this date unless it is an uber gem, which yours is not, so once again I would advice not to submit.

I don't see any obvious signs of cleaning and it does not look polished, however it appears to be AU or maybe low MS and the obv rim damage gives it less than a 50% chance of getting a straight grade and will imo be given an AU details grade. While 1881 is a slightly better date you can buy a slabbed straight graded AU58-MS62 examples for around $50-$60 at auction just about any day, so given the low value and high chance of a detail grade this would not be a good coin to spend the money to have graded/slabbed.

Best of luck on the submission, as you noted the photos are not good enough to be able to give you any feedback on if there are any issues to be seen.

Not the best photos but my wag grade is AU58 no FB, so the early bird/standard tier is the one I would use, that tier is for coins valued from $300 up to 3K. Even if I'm off and it grades low MS say 62-63 it would still fall into the same tier as those sell for around 3K. To get to 10K you would need it to grade MS66, and from your photos I see no chance of that.

Welcome to the forum, I am a Lincoln cent collector at heart but also enjoy early type especially the seated series coins. Share some photos of some coins and we look forward to your contributions.

dup

Harsh cleaning lines/marks are different than polished, I made my determination that the coin is polished because as noted the unnatural shine and how that covers both the fields and devices especially the cheek area but also the hair. There is always a difference in the look and sheen between the fields and the devices in a photo due to the differences in relief, your coin has the same look across the full coin.

You will be wasting your money, the coin has been polished has no numismatic value and will not be straight graded.

Many of the issues that surround Insider are (imo) his approach and how he interacts with those that reply, he can (and does to me) at times come off as abrasive, know-it-all, and condescending in a way that puts many on the defensive right away. I understand that he wants to help but his style does not seem to work well in a digital setting, perhaps he is better in a personal face-to-face setting. He is the only person that I have ever put on ignore, first when he was on the PCGS forum and now here, I recognize that sometimes you just don't get along with someone and that seems to be the case here for me.

Building a good relationship with a B&M store takes time, you have to commit some time to go the store and talk to the owner and develop that connection, however you will not always be successful as no one is able to hit it off with everyone. If you cannot find a local brick and mortar store that you can develop a good relationship with then finding a local coin club or show is your next best option. A club can provide you with some connections that may lead to better dealers and/or dealing with other collectors directly. A coin show both small local shows or large national shows will allow you to view much more inventory in one place and again develop relationships. On-line buying is much the same, buying at random is like a russian roulette game, its just a mater of time before you get burned. You need to seek out the dealers that sell the good coins not the cheap coins that have issues. The only way to do that is to put in the work and look at lots of sites, reach out and make contact with those that look good and ask questions. Make sure the dealer offers a return option. If you have a particular area of interest, say Lincoln cents, or Buffalo nickels, try and find collectors that share your interest and see who they buy from. Its not rocket science, you have to do the work and build the relationships which takes time.

See if you can get a better close up shot of the mint mark, it kinda looks like a type 2 but the photo gets too pixelated once I start to blow it up. If it is a type2 and graded as PF69UC you would about break even selling after costs, you would be able to sell it for a small profit (around $200ish net after costs) if it graded as PF70UC. No way to know unless you submit, but it is a gamble as currently NGC shows 2,300 in 69 and only 164 graded as 70, so the odds are that you would receive a 69 or lower grade.

Save your money and see if you can get a refund for the coin, you do not have the money DDR coin. This is what the money coin doubling looks like, the doubling is much more pronounced and to the north east (up and right as you view the coin). What you have looks like strike doubling, or what is referred to as machine doubling.

I have not.

I would call it VG08 details and net grade it down to VG4 or VG6 for the nicks and obv gouge.

I suggest you post photos of the coin (both obv and rev in focus and cropped), tell us what you think is making the coin so valuable and lets see if anyone agrees with you. If your not open to that idea for some odd reason then the only advice I can offer is to insure/declare it for $8 as my guess is that is what the coin is worth. You can insure/declare the value at your 4 to 5 figure value but that will cost a great bit more money both in shipping and grading fees.

From your description it sounds like common MD or die erosion, but difficult to say without photos. You can also look up the variety on Variety Vista to see if any of the known varieties match yours.

Does not look like an RPM to me

Way to easy for some of the more sensitive posters to get their feelings hurt that Charlie Collector moved their comment. I could see that going sideways and escalating into hurtful comments, basically I see a feature like this doing more harm than good. BTW anyone see the seated liberty I posted

Registry participants encompass a wide range of reasons for participating, the competitive aspect is only one of those reasons. Filling albums and book pages is fun but in the digital age some collectors enjoy the ability to see and share collections in a way that reaches farther than the local coin club. Also the ever growing world of slabbed coins made filling albums difficult as it was a financial step backward to crack coins out to fill holes. So the registry allows for the virtual hole filling experience without all the broken plastic and money lost doing so. As long as participants don't allow the fever to push them into buying over their financial abilities and accept that they may never win anything and simply enjoy viewing and sharing it can (and is for me) a very enjoyable experience. I know that I will never have the wallet to compete in any of the large and very contested series but that does not concern me in the least, I buy what I like and at the level I'm comfortable for the goals I have set for myself. I would also contend that coin collecting has always been competitive in some way, perhaps in days past one collector would see the cabinet of another and be impressed with his coins. That may have motivated him/her to find a better example to one-up the other guy, even if the other guy never knew or saw his friend's new better coin. The registry and the visibility of the internet just brings that aspect to the forefront. And yes there is a financial benefit to the TPG's, it seems obvious to me that TPG's would not run them if there were no upside in them for the TPG.