powermad5000

In nearly 500 submissions, I have only had one Mercury Dime changed to a higher tier which I thought was borderline so I went with the lower tier. I think I am doing pretty well on my self grading.

In this case it is not exactly helpful to the OP to show examples of Proofs which are struck entirely different and have a different surface from the OP's business strikes. Being I am trying to put together the full set of all dates and mintmarks minus the Proofs, I am one who is used to looking over the surfaces and get close to the grades as I am requiring the set to be all in minimum MS 64 FBL. I have gotten a few returned as 65 FBL's in my quest and I can tell the difference with those as they have almost no marks across the face and hair of Franklin and the reverses of those are basically free of marks especially on the bell.

If I may interject here, I would take the advice of JKK hands down, but I would also like to add being where you are at in your collecting of these, that I would research what eras and figures you are looking for depicted on the coins and then buying them already certified. It is very difficult to buy these raw and know for sure exactly what you are buying. That takes a significant amount of knowledge to do so buying them already certified would eliminate some of the guess work for you.

As I collect these and I am at about 83% of a complete set of MS 64 FBL's with a smattering of MS 65 FBL's, I'll give you my opinion of your halves. Please note, this is only an opinion based solely upon the quality of your photos and no one can give a full opinion of grade without having the coin in hand and being able to use proper lighting and magnification to see if there are other distracting marks or evidence of cleaning or damage. 1950 - MS 63 1952 D - MS 64 1953 D - MS 62 1954 D - MS 64 It could just be the photos, but from them, what I can see is there is some minor issue on each reverse that would preclude any of them from getting the FBL designation. The top TPG's have tightened the requirements lately on giving out the FBL designation. To get it, both sets of bell lines need to be fully distinct and fully separated all the way across. While all of yours are close, I don't think any of them would actually be awarded the designation.

Hello and welcome to the forum! I also live around the Chicagoland area. If you don't have any luck with CIBC, and you are willing to wait for a little bit, the CSNS coin show is taking place the first weekend of May at the Schaumburg Renaissance Convention Center. There are World Coin dealers there who would probably be willing to take all of them off of your hands. You could also spend some time walking the bourse and might find other things that interest you while you are there. You didn't indicate if you are a collector or just inherited these pennies and are looking to cash out. You could also try two other places in the Chicago area, Kedzie Coins, and the other one more likely to touch foreign currency would be Harlan J. Burke Rare Coins on Clark Street downtown.

Hello and welcome to the forum! The high mag photos actually make it harder for me to check what areas of interest you would want me to see. High mag can make a tiny nick look like the Grand Canyon. From what I do see in your photos concerning doubling or odd lettering, I can see the flow lines in the fields of the metal consistent with very late stage dies. Being that is the case, the "doubling" I see is not even a "stepped" like doubling which would be a strike doubling, but on your coins is a sloped-like mushy doubling consistent with what is called die erosion doubling. This can even account for the distortion on lettering as the dies are worn out past the point of the metal in the strike staying within the recesses of the die, and the metal has enough space to squeeze out of the design elements in the die making letters or numbers appear to have different shapes or sizes. All of this can be explained by dies being used past the point of normal wear, and none of it is considered an error but is viewed as poor quality control. While speaking on that subject, any of the features you are indicating might be on your coins would not be mint errors, but rather varieties. DDO, DDR, RPD, and RPM are not errors, they are varieties.

Hello and welcome to the forum! Without better cropped photos of both sides of the coin (as well as having the coin properly oriented from top to bottom in the photos), I cannot discuss any potential mint errors according to the tag you posted in the opening of your thread, nor can I give a general estimate of its value. If you provide the proper photos, I and others here will better be able to help you.

Hello and welcome! I just looked up this coin on eBay (as a reference only) and see several of them on there going for between $1,150 and $3,500. Seems the price is also grade dependent. According to the Mel Fisher website, Grade 1 coins were salvaged from the innermost part of the chest and therefore have better surfaces and less saltwater damage as well as were select for having a better strike, while Grade 4 are ones with the most amount of saltwater damage. There was a few of them in grade 3 listed on eBay with a price spread from $1,600 to $3,400. I would say the higher priced ones are just looking to make several hundred (or a thousand plus) off the deal while the $1,600 price is a more realistic gavel price. Remember, those who list on sites like that can list the coin for whatever they choose to and it is not indicative of fair market value. If you are trying to stay away from selling on eBay, you can try to go through one of the larger auction houses like Heritage, Stacks and Bowers, or Great Collections. There is also a site called HiBid that is gaining in popularity in the last year. I have no experience with any of those and I only sell on eBay. Regardless of eBay or other highly reputable auction houses, you have to remember that any of them are going to want their cut in fees. Selling to a dealer will also result in money taken off the final price by the dealer as they only buy at a discount in order to be able to resell and make their own profit.

Hello and welcome to the forum! Seeing that you posted only 11 hours ago (I get that this can be an eternity for someone with money burning a hole in their pocket that they just have to spend) your intent to acquire these pieces (at least the 1943 S cent), hopefully you did not yet complete the transaction to purchase these pieces. Most likely anything you are reading on the description of these "ultra rare" coins is false information. The internet is full of a lot of it. May I inquire as to where or whom you intend to purchase these from? Is it online? Is it a guy in a parking lot? Would it be on Temu? I would fully put the brakes on these purchases and you are fortunate to have come to the right place to inquire before you buy.

The coin you posted in the photos is a crudely made counterfeit, most likely one of the many cast replicas we see posted from time to time in the forums. You can see the small raised bumps which is associated with the casting of cheap pot metals. The details of this replica are worse than others with misshapen circular shapes and deformed lettering. The overall details are very mushy and lacking detail which is not due to wear. This is a coin that does not need to be appraised as it has no value.

Coins can tone in many different ways, and also some partially and others wholly. As others have stated, toning is not considered an error, but is a natural process when a metal reacts with its environment. On your cent, you can also see some very small spots of minor corrosion beginning. Unfortunately on these copper-clad zinc cents, once that process begins, it cannot be reversed and will only get worse.

Hello and welcome to the forum! I would have to say your coin is scratched. Strike through errors do not look like that. Just because it says in an eBay listing that it is an error, the onus is on you to do your due diligence and homework before you purchase a coin. This also applies to buying a coin raw in person. If the dealer told you it is a mint error just to unload a scratched coin, once he had your money and you walked out the door with it, in his head, he would be saying "SUCKER!". On eBay, however, there is a ton of damaged coins and circulated coins for sale by sellers claiming such damaged or worn pieces are mint errors and worth premium values. Most of these are scammers who are ready to take your money and then disappear off of the platform. A few of them are people who don't collect and just don't know what they are talking about. I don't know how long you have been collecting coins, but error coins are a niche in the hobby and it takes a large amount of time invested in learning errors which is an advanced area of numismatics. If you choose to not want to invest that kind of time in gaining knowledge of errors to be able to tell what is and what is not an error coin, you should only buy errors already slabbed and certified by one of the big TPG's. Sorry you got "taken" here, but in the future you might want to post a pic of the coin you are interested in here BEFORE you buy it and ask us to provide you with our assessments beforehand so you don't lose money.

We have all ruffled someone's feathers at some point. I agree with @J P M. The end result is a loss on their end. Snow there, and a possibility of severe weather here today. We surely are in spring now. Adult beverages sounds great today!

Hello and welcome to the forum! Do you have a question regarding the nickel you posted?

In my high school, they were strict about hair and its length. I went "high and tight" with a very short flat top and sides shaved down using a #1/2.

If you are asking if you need to self grade your coins and declare their proposed value before submitting them, the answer is yes. These things need to be filled out on your submission forms. If you are not good at self grading, this can turn into a loss of funds if you overestimate the grades and overvalue the coins when declaring their value. You might spend extra to submit under higher tiers which may not be necessary if you overgrade your coins prior to submitting them.

I stand corrected! 3:30AM wakeups for the last month and a half have affected my proper usage and command of the English language.

This coin has a low level of environmental damage, and was counterstamped with the letters JESSE which appears to be from individual letters hammered into the coin as they are not level across as would be in a stamp set more professionally with the lettering even at the bases and tops. I also see on the reverse of your quarter the circular damage from a coin roll wrapping machine. The coloring you are seeing is due to the breakdown of the copper-nickel clad layer from environmental damage which is allowing some of the copper core to show through giving it a yellowish tone.

In some instances Morgan dollars were put into paper rolls. Sometimes there is a reaction to something in the paper and the sliver of the coin, but when you see that effect it will be even around the whole edge of the coin and typically is more on the side of black in the color spectrum. Morgans also can tone in any kind of pattern and the colors can be all over the rainbow, hence those given the moniker Rainbow Morgans. Morgans can even tone from just sitting in a drawer due to moisture in the air. On your coin, however, I can easily see hairline scratches on both sides of the coin so your coin was harshly cleaned at some point and is now retoning which typically after being cleaned, the coin will not tone in any even pattern or even be even in color as you can see how some of the retoning on your coin is "splotchy" in some areas. This year and mintmark is not a key or semi key date in the series and a majority of submissions are in the low MS range which means higher quality specimens than the one you have posted are readily available to collectors. I would say your Morgan if sent would grade as VF details - Harshly Cleaned which would make resale of it difficult and there would be some dealers who would decline entirely to take it off of your hands. I would put its value at very slight over melt given its condition. This would make it unfeasable to submit for grading as you would be at a net loss of funds.

Seeing the Chuck E. Cheese token takes me back a few decades plus some years.

Another series where the mintage numbers can no longer be used to determine rarity are Morgan Dollars which many millions were melted under the Pittman Act and the dates and mintmarks of the melted coins were not processed so it is unknown exactly which and how many of each date and mintmark were melted. While the original mintage numbers may be listed as a "reference" for how many were originally struck, the survivability numbers for them are largely unknown. I also think in correlation to your observation of mintage number accuracy, a bigger defining number in regards to rarity is the survivability number which is even more difficult to pin down than the accuracy of the number originally minted as some coins can be lost, buried, worn beyond year and mintmark recognition, corroded to below Poor 1, thrown or fallen into the ocean never to be recovered, etc.

I also think you are seeing some kind of strike/mechanical doubling as it looks more step like and I don't see split serifs on the lettering. I believe one of our esteemed nickel collectors also discovered this same effect on some of the 2023's he got when they first started hitting circulation. If I remember, of the many that he had that looked like the one you posted, only one he found was the actual variety and not mechanical doubling.

I am not completely sure but I think PCI was a lower level coin grading and slabbing service that has been sold and resold numerous times. As far as I know about them, your original PCI grades are probably not as good as stated on their labels. My argument with their slabs stems from several years ago when a rash of Morgan dollars in PCI slabs appeared on eBay with too numerous of them graded as MS 68. MS 68 Morgan Dollars are typically 5-6 figure coins and there are very few graded that high. For many dozens of them to appear in the marketplace at that grade level threw a red flag at me and I inspected some of these listings using my own grading skills on one of the types I am very familiar with and have well over 100 NGC graded. I determined these PCI slabbed Morgans if graded by NGC would probably have graded no higher than MS 64 and most would have been 63 or 62. I am only saying this as I think PCI highly overgraded most of the coins in their slabs. While they may have gotten it right here or there, I would estimate overall, they are probably too high on 8 out of 10 slabs. Your coins were probably in this population of PCI overgrades to begin with. That said, it is nearly impossible to tell from photos of proofs what they would grade as because one tilt of the coin in proper lighting could expose a single flaw that could diminish the grade by at least one point or possibly more. As for Proofs having a DDO or DDR characteristic to them, it is wholly and entirely possible for that to happen. As an example, I own a 1957 Lincoln Cent NGC graded as a TDR (Tripled Die Reverse). You could look in NGC's Variety Plus if your proposed DDO matches a recognized variety that NGC would attribute.

At least you recognize what kind it is.

While the slab might be somewhere in the neighborhood of about ten years old, the slab itself is the four point holder type and is in fantastic shape. I photo all my returned slabs myself and then they head off to the safety deposit box which I only visit about twice a year and only actually pull slabs out once in a very blue moon if I have to hunt for one that gets pulled for sales purposes because I have upgraded a specific coin. The mentioned Trade Dollar would have to be resubmitted in the Standard tier and the photo is not worth an additional $40 to me when I have my own photos of it both raw and slabbed.