JKK

I could do that; just give me some phosphoric acid and a couple of punches. There are no doubled dies or extra letters in it.

Acid doesn't melt coins; it attacks them. As for this quarter, it's not a mint error. It's an abused quarter.

One of the biggest challenges in trying to help people is to imagine ourselves not knowing all that we know. For example, the term TPG: The new numismatist (let's say NN) rarely knows that this means Third-Party Grading (service). Some of us are good at realizing that we're addressing an audience that doesn't know all that we know, and some follow the "I'm not going to spoon-feed you; you know how to Google, so keep up, homes" approach.
We can do better, and since I'm probably the only professional editor in this particular space--if not, I'm not seeing anyone else step up, so I might as well be--I can help by mentioning things like this. I'd encourage us all to remember our audience, what it doesn't know, and to take the few extra moments to dial the guidance down to their level. It might feel repetitive, such as when explaining TPGs for the twentieth time, but each new arrival lacks awareness of our fatigue. We will better serve them if we try our utmost to assume less knowledge and impart the maximum understanding.
It's always reasonable to refer NNs to explanatory articles, price guides, grading guides, and so on. We can't control their content, and it will often be worth examining. But when we're the guides, let's make sure we don't miss the basics. For example, when the NN asks what the coin is worth, that question has multiple valid answers. There's what a typical dealer might pay; there's what a private collector might pay; there's what the price guides say. Obviously dealers do not pay full retail. Most of us have seen that collectors tend to pay more than dealers. No one's going to give them full book. NNs need to understand this or they can't get a fair idea of which number applies to their circumstances.
This could help alleviate some needless confusion.

One of the biggest challenges in trying to help people is to imagine ourselves not knowing all that we know. For example, the term TPG: The new numismatist (let's say NN) rarely knows that this means Third-Party Grading (service). Some of us are good at realizing that we're addressing an audience that doesn't know all that we know, and some follow the "I'm not going to spoon-feed you; you know how to Google, so keep up, homes" approach.
We can do better, and since I'm probably the only professional editor in this particular space--if not, I'm not seeing anyone else step up, so I might as well be--I can help by mentioning things like this. I'd encourage us all to remember our audience, what it doesn't know, and to take the few extra moments to dial the guidance down to their level. It might feel repetitive, such as when explaining TPGs for the twentieth time, but each new arrival lacks awareness of our fatigue. We will better serve them if we try our utmost to assume less knowledge and impart the maximum understanding.
It's always reasonable to refer NNs to explanatory articles, price guides, grading guides, and so on. We can't control their content, and it will often be worth examining. But when we're the guides, let's make sure we don't miss the basics. For example, when the NN asks what the coin is worth, that question has multiple valid answers. There's what a typical dealer might pay; there's what a private collector might pay; there's what the price guides say. Obviously dealers do not pay full retail. Most of us have seen that collectors tend to pay more than dealers. No one's going to give them full book. NNs need to understand this or they can't get a fair idea of which number applies to their circumstances.
This could help alleviate some needless confusion.

One of the biggest challenges in trying to help people is to imagine ourselves not knowing all that we know. For example, the term TPG: The new numismatist (let's say NN) rarely knows that this means Third-Party Grading (service). Some of us are good at realizing that we're addressing an audience that doesn't know all that we know, and some follow the "I'm not going to spoon-feed you; you know how to Google, so keep up, homes" approach.
We can do better, and since I'm probably the only professional editor in this particular space--if not, I'm not seeing anyone else step up, so I might as well be--I can help by mentioning things like this. I'd encourage us all to remember our audience, what it doesn't know, and to take the few extra moments to dial the guidance down to their level. It might feel repetitive, such as when explaining TPGs for the twentieth time, but each new arrival lacks awareness of our fatigue. We will better serve them if we try our utmost to assume less knowledge and impart the maximum understanding.
It's always reasonable to refer NNs to explanatory articles, price guides, grading guides, and so on. We can't control their content, and it will often be worth examining. But when we're the guides, let's make sure we don't miss the basics. For example, when the NN asks what the coin is worth, that question has multiple valid answers. There's what a typical dealer might pay; there's what a private collector might pay; there's what the price guides say. Obviously dealers do not pay full retail. Most of us have seen that collectors tend to pay more than dealers. No one's going to give them full book. NNs need to understand this or they can't get a fair idea of which number applies to their circumstances.
This could help alleviate some needless confusion.

One of the biggest challenges in trying to help people is to imagine ourselves not knowing all that we know. For example, the term TPG: The new numismatist (let's say NN) rarely knows that this means Third-Party Grading (service). Some of us are good at realizing that we're addressing an audience that doesn't know all that we know, and some follow the "I'm not going to spoon-feed you; you know how to Google, so keep up, homes" approach.
We can do better, and since I'm probably the only professional editor in this particular space--if not, I'm not seeing anyone else step up, so I might as well be--I can help by mentioning things like this. I'd encourage us all to remember our audience, what it doesn't know, and to take the few extra moments to dial the guidance down to their level. It might feel repetitive, such as when explaining TPGs for the twentieth time, but each new arrival lacks awareness of our fatigue. We will better serve them if we try our utmost to assume less knowledge and impart the maximum understanding.
It's always reasonable to refer NNs to explanatory articles, price guides, grading guides, and so on. We can't control their content, and it will often be worth examining. But when we're the guides, let's make sure we don't miss the basics. For example, when the NN asks what the coin is worth, that question has multiple valid answers. There's what a typical dealer might pay; there's what a private collector might pay; there's what the price guides say. Obviously dealers do not pay full retail. Most of us have seen that collectors tend to pay more than dealers. No one's going to give them full book. NNs need to understand this or they can't get a fair idea of which number applies to their circumstances.
This could help alleviate some needless confusion.

One of the biggest challenges in trying to help people is to imagine ourselves not knowing all that we know. For example, the term TPG: The new numismatist (let's say NN) rarely knows that this means Third-Party Grading (service). Some of us are good at realizing that we're addressing an audience that doesn't know all that we know, and some follow the "I'm not going to spoon-feed you; you know how to Google, so keep up, homes" approach.
We can do better, and since I'm probably the only professional editor in this particular space--if not, I'm not seeing anyone else step up, so I might as well be--I can help by mentioning things like this. I'd encourage us all to remember our audience, what it doesn't know, and to take the few extra moments to dial the guidance down to their level. It might feel repetitive, such as when explaining TPGs for the twentieth time, but each new arrival lacks awareness of our fatigue. We will better serve them if we try our utmost to assume less knowledge and impart the maximum understanding.
It's always reasonable to refer NNs to explanatory articles, price guides, grading guides, and so on. We can't control their content, and it will often be worth examining. But when we're the guides, let's make sure we don't miss the basics. For example, when the NN asks what the coin is worth, that question has multiple valid answers. There's what a typical dealer might pay; there's what a private collector might pay; there's what the price guides say. Obviously dealers do not pay full retail. Most of us have seen that collectors tend to pay more than dealers. No one's going to give them full book. NNs need to understand this or they can't get a fair idea of which number applies to their circumstances.
This could help alleviate some needless confusion.

One of the biggest challenges in trying to help people is to imagine ourselves not knowing all that we know. For example, the term TPG: The new numismatist (let's say NN) rarely knows that this means Third-Party Grading (service). Some of us are good at realizing that we're addressing an audience that doesn't know all that we know, and some follow the "I'm not going to spoon-feed you; you know how to Google, so keep up, homes" approach.
We can do better, and since I'm probably the only professional editor in this particular space--if not, I'm not seeing anyone else step up, so I might as well be--I can help by mentioning things like this. I'd encourage us all to remember our audience, what it doesn't know, and to take the few extra moments to dial the guidance down to their level. It might feel repetitive, such as when explaining TPGs for the twentieth time, but each new arrival lacks awareness of our fatigue. We will better serve them if we try our utmost to assume less knowledge and impart the maximum understanding.
It's always reasonable to refer NNs to explanatory articles, price guides, grading guides, and so on. We can't control their content, and it will often be worth examining. But when we're the guides, let's make sure we don't miss the basics. For example, when the NN asks what the coin is worth, that question has multiple valid answers. There's what a typical dealer might pay; there's what a private collector might pay; there's what the price guides say. Obviously dealers do not pay full retail. Most of us have seen that collectors tend to pay more than dealers. No one's going to give them full book. NNs need to understand this or they can't get a fair idea of which number applies to their circumstances.
This could help alleviate some needless confusion.

Coinbuf is absolutely right. Also, given that a 66 is worth $8 optimistically, you could buy 3-6 of those with the grading money. To me, that's always the killer argument: Would I rather have a piece of plastic or another coin? That's not a difficult decision for me.

I call slabs like that JGS--Joe's Grading Service. I could as easily start my own, with the same initials, and be about as credible. But I feel for the new collector, because there is no way for them to know until they are told. There are three reputable grading services: ANACS, NGC, PCGS. There's no telling how many JGSes there are, but none of them matter.
The coins themselves look nice enough, but so very common that there is no demand. This is the case with most business strikes, with rare exceptions, from 1965 on. While we probably all check our change to some degree, we are also aware that finding anything big in pocket change is a lottery-level rarity. There are just too many examples of each issue.
Since you're a new collector, let's take the dime and do a dive. It's a 71-D and they say it's BU, a classification no longer the standard, but I remember when it was. All right. In my most recent Coin World--the prices in which have only a casual acquaintance with what happens on the bourse--the condition listings begin at AU-50 and that says $0.15. At MS-63 (likely the most optimistic grade), it rises to $0.60--less than you pay to get a bottle of pop from a machine. At MS-66, $8.00; at MS-67, $60.00. Even then, it's not worth slabbing from a money standpoint because its most optimistic value about equals how much slabbing would cost you. If you found an MS-68, yeah, that's about what it would take to make sense, but if those were at all common, they would certainly not show up in change because it would take less than a minute in a change purse for MS-68 to become MS-60 or AU-58. Would probably happen the instant it touched any other coin.
Not that you said anything about getting these out of change, but that's usually where people start, and this is good for new collectors to realize. So how does one collect? Simple: you decide what you like. Our club president collects elongates (smashed pennies). I don't get it, but it's what he likes. Our VP collects errors. I get it, but I don't much care about them. Our treasurer collects Oregon tokens. I sort of get that, because he's a webfooted homegrown boy from Grants Pass and Oregon State and he loves his homeland, but the only Oregon item I ever got (a Federal Reserve Note issued in OR) I turned around and sold to him. I like world coins, medieval, Byzantine, and ancient coins, so those are what I collect. I have a modest US collection, but I don't add to it these days. You are the one who decides what you like, even if it's parking tokens or poker chips or so-called dollars or proof wheat pennies.

I call slabs like that JGS--Joe's Grading Service. I could as easily start my own, with the same initials, and be about as credible. But I feel for the new collector, because there is no way for them to know until they are told. There are three reputable grading services: ANACS, NGC, PCGS. There's no telling how many JGSes there are, but none of them matter.
The coins themselves look nice enough, but so very common that there is no demand. This is the case with most business strikes, with rare exceptions, from 1965 on. While we probably all check our change to some degree, we are also aware that finding anything big in pocket change is a lottery-level rarity. There are just too many examples of each issue.
Since you're a new collector, let's take the dime and do a dive. It's a 71-D and they say it's BU, a classification no longer the standard, but I remember when it was. All right. In my most recent Coin World--the prices in which have only a casual acquaintance with what happens on the bourse--the condition listings begin at AU-50 and that says $0.15. At MS-63 (likely the most optimistic grade), it rises to $0.60--less than you pay to get a bottle of pop from a machine. At MS-66, $8.00; at MS-67, $60.00. Even then, it's not worth slabbing from a money standpoint because its most optimistic value about equals how much slabbing would cost you. If you found an MS-68, yeah, that's about what it would take to make sense, but if those were at all common, they would certainly not show up in change because it would take less than a minute in a change purse for MS-68 to become MS-60 or AU-58. Would probably happen the instant it touched any other coin.
Not that you said anything about getting these out of change, but that's usually where people start, and this is good for new collectors to realize. So how does one collect? Simple: you decide what you like. Our club president collects elongates (smashed pennies). I don't get it, but it's what he likes. Our VP collects errors. I get it, but I don't much care about them. Our treasurer collects Oregon tokens. I sort of get that, because he's a webfooted homegrown boy from Grants Pass and Oregon State and he loves his homeland, but the only Oregon item I ever got (a Federal Reserve Note issued in OR) I turned around and sold to him. I like world coins, medieval, Byzantine, and ancient coins, so those are what I collect. I have a modest US collection, but I don't add to it these days. You are the one who decides what you like, even if it's parking tokens or poker chips or so-called dollars or proof wheat pennies.

I call slabs like that JGS--Joe's Grading Service. I could as easily start my own, with the same initials, and be about as credible. But I feel for the new collector, because there is no way for them to know until they are told. There are three reputable grading services: ANACS, NGC, PCGS. There's no telling how many JGSes there are, but none of them matter.
The coins themselves look nice enough, but so very common that there is no demand. This is the case with most business strikes, with rare exceptions, from 1965 on. While we probably all check our change to some degree, we are also aware that finding anything big in pocket change is a lottery-level rarity. There are just too many examples of each issue.
Since you're a new collector, let's take the dime and do a dive. It's a 71-D and they say it's BU, a classification no longer the standard, but I remember when it was. All right. In my most recent Coin World--the prices in which have only a casual acquaintance with what happens on the bourse--the condition listings begin at AU-50 and that says $0.15. At MS-63 (likely the most optimistic grade), it rises to $0.60--less than you pay to get a bottle of pop from a machine. At MS-66, $8.00; at MS-67, $60.00. Even then, it's not worth slabbing from a money standpoint because its most optimistic value about equals how much slabbing would cost you. If you found an MS-68, yeah, that's about what it would take to make sense, but if those were at all common, they would certainly not show up in change because it would take less than a minute in a change purse for MS-68 to become MS-60 or AU-58. Would probably happen the instant it touched any other coin.
Not that you said anything about getting these out of change, but that's usually where people start, and this is good for new collectors to realize. So how does one collect? Simple: you decide what you like. Our club president collects elongates (smashed pennies). I don't get it, but it's what he likes. Our VP collects errors. I get it, but I don't much care about them. Our treasurer collects Oregon tokens. I sort of get that, because he's a webfooted homegrown boy from Grants Pass and Oregon State and he loves his homeland, but the only Oregon item I ever got (a Federal Reserve Note issued in OR) I turned around and sold to him. I like world coins, medieval, Byzantine, and ancient coins, so those are what I collect. I have a modest US collection, but I don't add to it these days. You are the one who decides what you like, even if it's parking tokens or poker chips or so-called dollars or proof wheat pennies.

Heh. Advertising 4FS is like advertising 'Monticello fully outlined,' and about as germane to value.

Yes, for the many years in which the reverse didn't always strike up fully. FS is tough because the slightest break in any step rules the coin out. I am not sure when they changed the minting process so that 6FS became the norm, but in modern mintages I think they are quite common.

Yes, for the many years in which the reverse didn't always strike up fully. FS is tough because the slightest break in any step rules the coin out. I am not sure when they changed the minting process so that 6FS became the norm, but in modern mintages I think they are quite common.

I think there is also--speaking of why coins get sent for grading that make no objective sense--an idea that slabbing is "doing it right." Let's look at the general public. One can divide them into a couple of broad groupings: those who just wing everything, tend to overbook themselves and be late, cut corners, and tend to use "lol" as a comma and period. They just always figure everything will be okay, don't sweat the details, "im not doin all that stuf f** that noize." If they have yards, they never run the weedwacker. I'm not saying it's bad to be that way; I'm saying if that describes someone, they should own it. This mentality dominates the world of contractors, which is why we pay so much for such slapdash work unless we monitor them and don't let them get away with it.
Then there's the fussy grouping, the one that wants things done right. This group is in earnest. They tend to obey the four-way stop laws. They read things that say tl;dr. They proofread their writing as best they can, and probably balance their checkbooks. When this group shows up in numismatics, they see that they have Found Their Home (and I'm not mocking that--it described me long ago). Coins are a hobby that absolutely sweats the small stuff, as anyone who has ever agonized over the prominence of a contact mark on Liberty's cheek can attest. This group wants to do it right, and to them, the natural assumption is that this means having the coins graded and encapsulated. And not by a JGS, but by one who matters. They aren't correct, but we should at least see why they thought that, and have the patience to explain why it doesn't make sense to spend $50 to slab a nice MS common date Linc.
Far as I'm concerned, the best argument is all the coins they could buy for the $50. At least, that's the one that would have my attention listening real closely.

I think there is also--speaking of why coins get sent for grading that make no objective sense--an idea that slabbing is "doing it right." Let's look at the general public. One can divide them into a couple of broad groupings: those who just wing everything, tend to overbook themselves and be late, cut corners, and tend to use "lol" as a comma and period. They just always figure everything will be okay, don't sweat the details, "im not doin all that stuf f** that noize." If they have yards, they never run the weedwacker. I'm not saying it's bad to be that way; I'm saying if that describes someone, they should own it. This mentality dominates the world of contractors, which is why we pay so much for such slapdash work unless we monitor them and don't let them get away with it.
Then there's the fussy grouping, the one that wants things done right. This group is in earnest. They tend to obey the four-way stop laws. They read things that say tl;dr. They proofread their writing as best they can, and probably balance their checkbooks. When this group shows up in numismatics, they see that they have Found Their Home (and I'm not mocking that--it described me long ago). Coins are a hobby that absolutely sweats the small stuff, as anyone who has ever agonized over the prominence of a contact mark on Liberty's cheek can attest. This group wants to do it right, and to them, the natural assumption is that this means having the coins graded and encapsulated. And not by a JGS, but by one who matters. They aren't correct, but we should at least see why they thought that, and have the patience to explain why it doesn't make sense to spend $50 to slab a nice MS common date Linc.
Far as I'm concerned, the best argument is all the coins they could buy for the $50. At least, that's the one that would have my attention listening real closely.

I spend time with our club's YNs and mentor them as best I can. One recent fun moment was when a young Chinese-American member was asking questions about some cashes.I told him about Hartill, then realized I could do something nice for him. I bought myself an updated copy and gave him my old one. He was so excited. My crew for the front desk at our show includes him, another YN and his dad (make a son happy and you make his parent happy, no doubt ever), and a mom who is on our board. They do good work and they walk away feeling like what they did mattered. I am very proud of the direction our officers have taken to promote numismatic education with a strong YN program, and the fact that a third of our attendees last night were women and YNs (a couple girls fit both categories) tells me we have an inclusive club that is building its future.

Weigh it. A penny planchet weighs far less than a nickel planchet. Odds are you are mainly going by the color, which has many likelier explanations than an incorrect planchet. Another notable piece of evidence is that all the detail seems to have been struck onto the coin, which with a nickel die striking a Zincoln planchet doesn't seem very likely to me as the Zincoln planchet is much smaller and thinner. If it were theoretically able to be smashed flat enough to accommodate nickel detail, I'm not sure what would happen to it, but I suspect it'd be about the thickness of a dime.

Weigh it. A penny planchet weighs far less than a nickel planchet. Odds are you are mainly going by the color, which has many likelier explanations than an incorrect planchet. Another notable piece of evidence is that all the detail seems to have been struck onto the coin, which with a nickel die striking a Zincoln planchet doesn't seem very likely to me as the Zincoln planchet is much smaller and thinner. If it were theoretically able to be smashed flat enough to accommodate nickel detail, I'm not sure what would happen to it, but I suspect it'd be about the thickness of a dime.

Seattle had more rain when I was going to college there, and in the next eleven years. Where was the bar? I might have heard about it. I worked downtown for some years, which sucked as a commute from what became Shoreline while I was there.
I always had to watch out for mildew in my crappy little apartments. Here in Portland's western burbs, I run a dehumidifier, but this second stint on the wet side has been less wet and more hot than I ever saw in Seattle/Shoreline. I remember the highest temp I ever saw in Seattle was 93 (and you'd think people were dying a foul death from it). High in Kennewick was 112. I never imagined we'd see either 114 or 0% humidity in Portland, but I have seen both for short periods in the last three years here. This is a good place to start an HVAC business, because when the temps do go wild, a bunch of stuff goes out and people start calling around asking who they have to blow to get a tech out there today. 

Seattle had more rain when I was going to college there, and in the next eleven years. Where was the bar? I might have heard about it. I worked downtown for some years, which sucked as a commute from what became Shoreline while I was there.
I always had to watch out for mildew in my crappy little apartments. Here in Portland's western burbs, I run a dehumidifier, but this second stint on the wet side has been less wet and more hot than I ever saw in Seattle/Shoreline. I remember the highest temp I ever saw in Seattle was 93 (and you'd think people were dying a foul death from it). High in Kennewick was 112. I never imagined we'd see either 114 or 0% humidity in Portland, but I have seen both for short periods in the last three years here. This is a good place to start an HVAC business, because when the temps do go wild, a bunch of stuff goes out and people start calling around asking who they have to blow to get a tech out there today. 

It is. Systems come in from the coast and hit the Cascades, a chain of andesite volcanoes and associated mountainry. This creates ski areas, and not much moisture gets past the high country except in northern WA. Get over the mountains and it's pretty arid. Potland/Vancouver and Seattle/Tacoma/Everett are on the wet sides, so they get more rain than the dry side but not as much as the coasts. My mother used to teach at Neah Bay, a res where WA comes to a point at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and somewhat as we used to say back home, it typically rained much like a cow voiding her bladder on a flat rock.

I used to live in Kennewick, Washington. Outside the NW it is not generally understood that only the western sides of OR and WA get a lot of rain. Both have mountain ranges dividing dry side from wet side, and Kennewick is one of the Tri-Cities (naturally often called the Dry Cities, or worse) along with Richland and Pasco, three hours and one major mountain pass from Seattle. In Kennewick, the wind blows pretty much all the time and the dominant terrain is sagebrush and sand. The wind often picks up enough of the finer dust to create dust storms; in fact, near Hermiston, OR there are signs warning of the potential for low visibility due to blowing dust.
The sagebrush (Russian thistle; invasive) breaks off when it dies as a big spiny tumbleweed ball about the size of a really big charcoal grill, and they pile up on the fences to the point where they provide a ramp for more tumbleweeds to roll over them. At Hanford, where the primary activity is not cleaning up the nuclear waste (blaming unions and DEA, never themselves) so that their children can get overpaid jobs not cleaning it up which will help their kids in turn have overpaid jobs not cleaning it up, there used to be a crew that drove around the fence lines (it's almost 600 square miles) doing nothing but safely burning tumbleweeds. As you might imagine, "safely" is the key word because in a place that only gets about 8" of rain a year (compare this to about 110" out in Forks, Twilight show country near the coast, and Aberdeen, Nirvana country on Grays Harbor), they fear fire like people on wooden ships or in lumber mills. Normal summers are about 100 F highs, spiking over 112 rarely.
What's really fun is when it's that hot, the wind kicks up and creates a dust storm, and you're catching nine innings. Like living in a hair dryer full of desert camo baby powder. Doesn't snow much or ice much because not enough moisture most of the time to begin building up on surfaces. And yet the Columbia, which is about half a mile wide, rolls right through with so much water SoCal was begging for some of it years back. Probably will again. (Good luck getting that across Oregon, heh.)

It is. Systems come in from the coast and hit the Cascades, a chain of andesite volcanoes and associated mountainry. This creates ski areas, and not much moisture gets past the high country except in northern WA. Get over the mountains and it's pretty arid. Potland/Vancouver and Seattle/Tacoma/Everett are on the wet sides, so they get more rain than the dry side but not as much as the coasts. My mother used to teach at Neah Bay, a res where WA comes to a point at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and somewhat as we used to say back home, it typically rained much like a cow voiding her bladder on a flat rock.