RWB

No Special Mint Sets or individual coins were made in 1964. The link posted above is filled with assumptions, distortions, ignorance, and outright lies intended to deceive collectors.

Ahhhh...OK. You seemed to be mixing terms as if a "CAC" sticker meant the coin was also a "gem" in the old descriptive sense.

I agree, they cannot. And that is exactly why the grade of a coin - it's state of preservation - must not include personal opinion about luster, desirability, strike and other non-empirical criteria. The condition ("grade") is the fundamental characteristic of a coin or medal....properly standardized, it is the "facts" about a coin. This is just as much a part of the coin as its provenance. The coin's condition ("grade") is, of course, merely one criteria buyer and seller can use to determined the marketability and collector interest in a coin. The condition ("grade") is also one of the aspects that can be quantified - we have, and have had for decades, the tools to do this; quickly, reliably, objectively. The fundamental fault in current TPG-type "grading" is that it attempts to blend too many obscure and esoteric concepts into a single, unreliable number or adjective. If TPGs and collectors focused on the facts, the free market of buyers and sellers would take care of the rest.

Depends on whether your coins fit the "CAC gem" [sic] category. Do they all have gold stickers or at least smiley faces from Walmart?

The "grade" of a coin should depend only on measurable quantities - such as relative wear, or quantity and severity of surface marks for uncirculated coins. "Strike," or rather design detail, could be in this category if we had accurate reference images/models for what the design was supposed to look like, AND what was the best possible circulating coinage detail. As it is, we have those for only a few coins, so detail has to go into the opinion bin, along with all the pointless gnomes such as "full steps" "full bands" "full head" and "full-o-bologna."

I assumed your background was off-white - or something similar. The color of the original image background is light blue. You can find instructions for measuring the density ("specific gravity") on the internet.

They have a different color... CuNi will look like a 5-cent nickel coin in color. Also, the density will differ. The density of Cu 75 Ni 25 is 8.95; common brass, Cu 80 Zn 20 is 8.59 g/^3 cm.

Can't determine anything from the photos. Need weight, edge photos, etc., etc. Specifications say brass, weight of 4 grams. Correcting for color balance also supports brass. How could this be mistaken for CuNi alloy?

The opinion is fine, but it must be in the proper context and identified. The present non-system jumbles different characteristics together into an unintelligible mess. Unless the "grade" is separated from opinion, it is a useless waste of money and time. FYI - I have decades of coin collecting before concentrating on research, so I have collector perspective. I have no meaningful experience in touting coins or the kind of greedy exaggeration some espouse.

Nice. PS: "LSC" is redundant, merely give the date and mintmark.

All I advocate is separation of the grade of a coin from any assumption of value. I disagree that " most buyers and sellers - both collectors and dealers - obviously want more valuing from TPG’s than you do." No one asked them. The situation was simply imposed as a means of increasing revenue and falsely increasing "value" by padding grades with opinion fluff. No TPG should have any role in determining a coin's market value. Doing away with "grading" won't happen. It is part of human thought processes to organize and characterize information. But what can be done is to assign clear standards for each "grade" and then do our best to assess only those factors that can be determined empirically. This leaves all (or most) of the personal opinion under the control of buyer/seller/owner. (This basic discussion appears during the 1850s as coin and medal auctions gained traction and the collector base expanded.)

Just watching.

Correct. That does not exclude them from individual appeal or valuation, both of which are opinions. Auctions, sellers and buyers can then present their opinions without agreeing or disagreeing with the assigned "grade." The free market then assumes its proper capitalist role. I do not feel that ANY TPG should ever be involved in "valuing" a coin or medal - that is strictly a market task.

French love to wear their medals - Légion d'honneur, Croix de Guerre, and the Grand Apprentissage de la Propreté, etc. The Americans just wear their crooked tie and coat unbuttoned.

That would be condition of the coin based on Sheldon's definition. "Sharp or not sharp" is an opinion. However, sales hype and lies have led people to assume some sort of 'perfection' rather than a clear definition.

Sets of gold plated coins - from quarters through dollars - have been sold to rubes for years by shysters. The pictured Anthony dollar is one of thousands put into circulation when the buyer, or their heirs, realized they'd been duped.

"I have obtained some of the former ones through Coin Brokers, but am sick of their extortions...." [James S. Bryant, Waterford, CT March 1, 1866.]

True, and it also becomes less meaningful as more opinion and personal bias are piled onto the mix. The "wear" and/or surface marks are all that are necessary for a "Grade." Everything else is a descriptor and belongs elsewhere. (I concede that if TPGs will adopt clear empirical standards for proof-like, and use only electronic means to determine this, then it would also qualify as an objective characteristic.)

Is that a road-kill lizard on the seal? Good stuff, but did not know they had balloons back then. Also did not know that all their aquanauts had to be named "Hugh."

The small dollar program is given a general overview in my book: Private Pattern and Related Pieces: International Nickel & Gould Incorporated, (2019). The coin could have succeeded if the Treasury had not insisted on bending to vending machine interests, and used a diameter that was too close to the quarter for a one-dollar coin. The technology division and outside entities warned Treasury/Mint of the consequences, and this was one of Gould's arguments in favor of titanium's distinctive weight and ability to be colored by anodization. Vending machine manufacturers wanted the lowest possible cost impact on their equipment, so the entire project was condemned to failure - and continues to fail although for somewhat different economic reasons.

The most likely explanation is that Spanish 8 Reales were made in that orientation, and we based our dollar's silver content (incorrectly) on an average of these coins.

Nice Ukrainian 2 million karbovantsiv commemorative the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl tragedy. This is the version with the UN 1995 obverse. (The birds are Ukranian White Storks (cranes) which are symbols of family, and also of loss and renewal.)

The quoted terms are sales/marketing terms as used by TPGs. They have no more meaning than "New! Improved" on your laundry detergent, or "Healthy" on salted deep fried lard. A numismatic definition of "first strike" exists from the 19th century. It literally means the first complete, successful coin made from a new pair of dies. There is, by definition, only one such coin from each new pair of dies, and only one overall from production. (See Columbian halves story and Remington Typewriter Corp.) One could reasonably call the #2 to, say, #100 coins "early strikes" but that would require both counting and examination. Such coins would have the characteristics of pieces made from fresh dies without the luster that soon forms from use. The exact cutoff would have to be an observational determination --- not something that will happen in a production environment.

I recall there being some in the NARA files....but was never very interested in these, so I did not make copies. This was at least 10-12 years ago and only a brief look.

Yes. Small size Ike dollars were struck in test batches. Destruction of the dies and test pieces is recorded.