The NGC star and MS Franklins.

[SkyMan]

Almost 2 years ago I stumbled upon a 1949-S MS65*FBL Franklin. I was seriously pumped, and looked at the NGC census to find out how rare * Franklins were. I figured that 1958-D's would be the most common, with maybe 1957-D's and 1956's right up there. What really intrigued me was to see how rare these puppies were. Here's something I wrote on the TCCS forums at the time, (7/31/06)...

 

"I was at a local coin show this weekend and stumbled upon a 1949-S Frankie in NGC MS 65*FBL. It was a date/mintmark that I needed, so for a mixture of a 1947 Walker and some cash it was purchased. '49-S's are a tough coin to find with toning, so it is not a spectacular piece..., but the coin is pretty for the date/mintmark. Anyhow, I knew that * Frankies are few and far between, but, being bored on a saturday night, I checked out/compiled the NGC stats. There are a total of 65,360 MS and 13,194 MSFBL Frankies graded at NGC (in this case MS includes all the circulated grades too), a grand total of 78,554 Frankies. For all these tens of thousands of Frankies there are 134 MS* and 62 MS*FBL Frankies, a grand total of 196 * Frankies for the whole series. To put it another way, for every THOUSAND Frankies graded at NGC aproximately 2.5 will get a star and less than 0.8 will get a star FBL. It really brought home to me just how difficult it is to find a nicely toned Frankie, particularly with FBL."

 

 

 

Anyhow, today I decided to see what has happened in the intervening ~ 2 years. Using todays (6/15/08) current census report there are now 72,872 non-fbl and 16,139 FBL Frankies graded, for a grand total of 89,011. Of these there are 173 non-fbl* and 77 FBL* Frankies, for a grand total of 250. The absolute percent has changed a bit, but is still EXCEEDINGLY small. To put it another way, during this time span there were 7,512 non-fbl Frankies graded with 39 getting a star... roughly 0.52% There were 2,945 FBL's graded with 15 getting a star, again roughly 0.51%. In essence for roughly every 200 Frankies graded 1 will get a star.

 

Oh, and while the 1958-D was the most common, it now numbers 49 total stars, e.g. ~20% of all starred Frankies, the other top five most common dates rather surprised me (except for the '58-P). In order after the '58-D (49) they were; '53-S (25), '52-S (16), '49-S (15) and '58 (13). Almost 2/3 of all stars come from just 7 date/mm's (e.g. 1/5 of the date/mm's).

 

And I suppose we ought to have a starred Franklin on this post, so...

 

 

[harvey8542]

Thank you very informative post and Great coin

[braddick]

Excellent observations.

It is a good thing "BattleCreek" went after Morgans and left the Franklins alone.

[TomB]

It's an apparently straightforward and interesting way to use the numbers, but there could also be another interpretation.

 

It might be that the great majority of extremely lustrous and/or wildly toned Franklins were already graded by the time the * designation was unveiled. After all, NGC was in business for 15-years or so by the time the * designation was employed. In this scenario, the pool of Franklins worthy of the * designation would be skewed towards coins already in holders to a greater degree than the pool of Franklins that are not worthy of the * designation. Therefore, the rate of * designation worthy coins would slow over time to a trickle even if the absolute rate of such coins was substantially higher. This interpretation is not so difficult to believe, or at least to give some thought, since the Franklin series has historically not been a series where there are a vast number of coins with such a high basal value that they would be slabbed. Rather, the Franklin series is one where the presence of the FBL status or the presence of fantastic toning might spur submission of an otherwise less valuable coin.

[physics-fan3.14]

And of those 250 *s, how many reside in the SkyMan collection? I didn't realize there were so few.

[SkyMan]

It's an apparently straightforward and interesting way to use the numbers, but there could also be another interpretation.

 

It might be that the great majority of extremely lustrous and/or wildly toned Franklins were already graded by the time the * designation was unveiled. After all, NGC was in business for 15-years or so by the time the * designation was employed. In this scenario, the pool of Franklins worthy of the * designation would be skewed towards coins already in holders to a greater degree than the pool of Franklins that are not worthy of the * designation. Therefore, the rate of * designation worthy coins would slow over time to a trickle even if the absolute rate of such coins was substantially higher. This interpretation is not so difficult to believe, or at least to give some thought, since the Franklin series has historically not been a series where there are a vast number of coins with such a high basal value that they would be slabbed. Rather, the Franklin series is one where the presence of the FBL status or the presence of fantastic toning might spur submission of an otherwise less valuable coin.

 

Actually Tom, I think it is somewhat the other way around. Realistically you need to grade a 65 non-fbl on a regular basis to make some money on Frankies (barring the low grade, but Mama Mia! coins). Given that driver, many of the coins graded in the pre-* era DO NOT PASS THE MUSTER for reslabbing. In 2006 I noted this possibility (in a non-quoted portion of the original thread) when I pointed out that ~0.025% of Franklins were starred, but that there was an unknown backlog of unstarred coins due to the time lag before NGC started starring. In today's thread I've used the intervening ~2 year span to show that the actual rate of starring is approximately double, e.g. ~0.5%, (which by any standards is still pretty puny), what the original raw numbers pointed out. However, I agree that over time there probably will be a decrease in the percentage of new coins that get starred as all the top ones will already have been slabbed.

 

Jason, my starred Frankies are as follows (and note that they follow the top 5 for starring):

 

1 1949-S MS65*FBL,

1 1952-S MS67*,

1 1953-S MS66*,

2 1958-D MS66*,

1 1958-D MS66*FBL,

 

Grand Total = 6.

 

I've got several others that I think have a serious shot at starring (and of course I'm NOT including any PCGS coins).

[TomB]

If I understand your post correctly, then I believe you have missed my point and it is likely due to how I wrote my first post in this thread. I was not writing about coins that would be reholdered or reslabbed, but was writing about coins that had never previously been sent to NGC for certification. Regardless of where either of us stands on this issue, I agree that the percentage of Franklins with the * designation is quite low and that even if the * designation were to have been established early on in the certification history of NGC that these coins would still not be common.

 

Below please find a hypothetical step-by-step explanation of what I had been attempting to put forth as an idea in my first post. If you follow my step-by-step hypothetical you will notice that it does have merit and is not what I believe you first interpreted my post to state.

 

1) Start at time point zero with no MS Franklin halves graded, a consistent definition of what constitutes each grade point, a consistent definition of what constitutes FBL and a consistent definition of the * designation. In other words, perfect reproducibility and no gradeflation with time.

 

2) Assume 1% of all MS Franklin halves would meet the NGC criteria for the * designation because they are either highly lustrous or wildly toned, or both.

 

3) Assume a total pool of 100,000 MS Franklin halves that may be submitted over time to NGC.

 

4) If there is a * designation rate of 1% and there are 100,000 MS Franklin halves in the pool, then there would be 1,000 MS Franklin halves worthy of the * designation.

 

5) It seems to be my experience that the coins that would benefit the most from certification are those that, in general, are certified the quickest by their owners in order to increase value or liquidity, or both.

 

6) Open the grading service to a large number of submitted MS Franklin halves.

 

7) What MS Franklin halves would we expect enriched in the earliest submissions? The answer is likely in step five, above, and would likely be those MS Franklin halves that benefit the most from certification. This pool would be enriched for FBL and * designation worthy coins.

 

8) Over time we would expect coins of lesser overall quality to be submitted and, therefore, a lower rate of FBL and * designation worthy coins. This means that if we analyzed a two-year window immediately after our hypothetical certification service commenced operations that we might expect the rate of FBL and * designation coins to be higher than the rate of such coins within a two-year window at a later date in the future. In this case we might expect 6% of the first submitted Franklin halves to qualify for the * designation while analysis of later time windows might show 3% or 1% or 0.5% of Franklin halves that earned the * designation. However, the overall rate of * designation Franklin halves had been defined as 1%, which would mean that most of our time windows would give inaccurate results, either too low or too high.

 

Of course we cannot do this analysis in the real world. However, I have a few population reports from PCGS on my desk that go back to 1997 and using these population reports we can look at the rate of PCGS designated FBL Franklin halves over time. I do not know the exact time when PCGS started to use the FBL designation on Franklin halves, but I have searched the PCGS forums for this information and several longtime collectors of the series have written that the time window was from mid-1997 to early-1998.

 

For this hypothetical, the number of MS Franklin halves and MSFBL Franklin halves certified by PCGS has been totalled for various time points from 1997-2008. If the results are consistent with my hypothetical situation listed in steps one through eight, above, then we would expect that the rate of FBL Franklins certified by PCGS over time would decrease as time goes by after the start of FBL designation. In other words, the rate of FBL Franklins certified expressed as a percentage of total MS Franklins certified by PCGS within any given window of time will generally be lower as time goes forward.

 

The time windows with percentage FBL designated Franklin halves is below. Please note that not all time windows are equal in length and not all time windows have the same number of coins graded within the window. The windows were chosen simply because I have only a few printed PCGS population reports and I wanted to use as many as I could for this excersize.

 

Oct '97-Dec '99 82.5% FBL

Dec '99-Dec '01 77.1% FBL

Dec '01-Jan '03 79.4% FBL

Jan '03-Jan '07 64.9% FBL

Jan '07-Jan '08 50.2% FBL

 

The chart above shows that with time the percentage of FBL designated coins gets lower, in general, within each discrete time window. This is consistent with the idea that potentially more valuable or liquid coins might be the first to be certified. Since many * designated coins are wildly toned and since wildly toned coins, in general, sell for more money when they are certified and are more liquid when they are certified then it is not a great leap to think that perhaps many of these wildly toned coins were certified before the * designation was implemented.

 

Please note that I am not stating that * designated Franklin halves are common coins. Rather, I wanted to explain my earlier post and then actually found it a bit enjoyable to go through this decidedly simple and not completely accurate number adventure. However, I was happy to see in the end that it reflected the point I had been attempting to make in my post. Again, please realize that I am not arguing with you; I'm simply trying to explain my thought process in your post.

[kryptonitecomics]

I made (2) 1958-D Star Frankie in the last 3 monthes...should have been 3 but I agree......the quality of star worthy coins outside of original mint sets is small and even when I find beautiful rainbow examples....NGC isn't staring them so I think that's also going to keep the numbers depressed

[supertooth]

Sky Man and Tom------ I find this post to be extremely interesting. Thanks to both of you.

 

As a kid, I had two Franklin sets that I put together from pocket change---same as I had two Walker sets. Many of the later Franklins were "unc" pieces. They had been picked out of bank rolls that had been obtained at various locations in one's normal travels. In those days, there wasn't any number grading---so, I wouldn't have known to worry about whether the coin was a 60 or a 66 per se. Just whether or not it looked better---according to what one could discern from one's natural vision. I did pay attention to the coin's bagmarks[clutter] and naturally tried to pick coins with fewer marks.

 

My interests had ALWAYS been towards the Walkers. But, recently, I purchased two complete sets of BU Franklins. These sets were housed in Wayte pages by the original owner from the 1948 to 63 years as the coins became available. Many of the coins have acquired decent toning. Because of this, I decided to take a little deeper look and to get a little better at grading the Franklin half dollar.

 

My point of interest was that I found that the vast majority of MS Ben Franklin halves are graded either 64 or 65 coins. While the grade of 63 is used, the grade of 66 is not used much----except for a few dates in the 1950's. This seemed very strange to me as, in the Walker series the 63 and the 66 grades seem to be used more often---as well as the 64 and the 65 grades. It left me with the thought that, if you sent an MS Franklin to either NGC or PCGS for grading, the liklihood would be that your chances for either a 64 or a 65 coin were "very high". While to get a 66 or a 'star' designation was relatively small. I felt that the Franklin coin had been "lumped" into just two grade points---the 64 and the 65. And both NGC and PCGS seem to have done that.

 

My guess as to Why the coins seemed to grade either a 64 or a 65 was that NOT MANY were of such quality as to get anything higher. This seems to follow all that I have read about poorer dies---lack of striking pressures---overuse of those poorer dies. All of the above seem to lead to very few coins that are worthy of "special" grades or "star" quality. I guess that may also explain why a lot of folks don't find the Franklin series to be very stimulating? In any event, that would, at least in my mind, be a reason to value "any" of the higher graded or star designated coins. Also, to try and acquire the FBL coins wherever possible. You would think that with mintages in the millions----with coins dating only to the 1950's and early 60's that there would and "should" be a greater number of quality coins---which obviously there are NOT. Bob [supertooth]

[physics-fan3.14]

 

My guess as to Why the coins seemed to grade either a 64 or a 65 was that NOT MANY were of such quality as to get anything higher. This seems to follow all that I have read about poorer dies---lack of striking pressures---overuse of those poorer dies. All of the above seem to lead to very few coins that are worthy of "special" grades or "star" quality. I guess that may also explain why a lot of folks don't find the Franklin series to be very stimulating? In any event, that would, at least in my mind, be a reason to value "any" of the higher graded or star designated coins. Also, to try and acquire the FBL coins wherever possible. You would think that with mintages in the millions----with coins dating only to the 1950's and early 60's that there would and "should" be a greater number of quality coins---which obviously there are NOT. Bob [supertooth]

 

:thumbsup: This is one reason why I like the Franklin - it is underappreciated because people don't really understand the challenges of collecting Franklins. Yes, with a mintage of several dozen million you would think that the 1963D would be readily available in high quality - but have you ever tried to look for one? Finding a true gem well struck Franklin is a challenge, but it is always an exciting and rewarding treasure hunt!

[SkyMan]

Tom, I understood your point perfectly well last night AND AGREE WITH YOU. The most appealing and starworthy coins were most likely holdered first, and therefore were not designated stars at that point in time as NGC was not giving the star.

 

However, the point that I was making was that while there are certainly coins in early holders that are worthy of a star, there has been a fair amount of culling of these coins when they were first slabbed, by them being slabbed in lower grade holders, thus making the potential reholderers more conscious of the costs of reslabbing. For example, let's say you've got a wild looking 1958-D in NGC MS64. Let's say you paid 8 times graysheet, e.g. $104, to buy it. The cost of designation review is $10, and you've got to pay shipping both ways... let's say another $5. Right there you've added ~15% to your cost... with how much of a potential payback? On the other hand, let's say you buy one in MS65 at 8 times graysheet, e.g. $248. Then the cost for designation review and shipping is only 6% of your purchase price, and the potential for making more profit at the Gem level has increased. However, as I said, I do agree with you, we are just looking at 2 different sides of the same equation, and I do suspect that over time the percentage of newly submitted coins that will * will decrease.

 

...You would think that with mintages in the millions----with coins dating only to the 1950's and early 60's that there would and "should" be a greater number of quality coins---which obviously there are NOT. Bob [supertooth]

 

Bob, that is one of the reasons I really like Franklins. Finding nice ones is a lot trickier than people would think given the number of Frankies minted and the fact that they were minted so recently. If you know what you are doing you can buy a truly rare coin for relative peanuts.

 

Also, regarding your comments about 64/65 grading vs. 63/66 grading, I think part of what is going on is that slabbing a MS63 Frankie is to in essence shoot yourself in the foot. Therefore people are a LOT more careful about sending in the coins that are high end 63's. As to 66's, on a percentage basis, there just aren't a lot out there given the relatively plain design of Frankies which clearly shows dings etc., unlike the Walker design which is busy enough to hide certain hits.

[TomB]

Howdy Sy, thanks for taking the time to read through my rambling post. It was late when I started to type and then I switched gears in the post after I noticed I had the PCGS population reports sitting on the shelf. I'm certain it was not an easy post to read.

[PCcoins]

I kind of disagree with stars decreasing. Still alot of coins around in original gov't packaging and old cardboard holders. All of my best toners are raw and expect a few stars when I submit for grading!

[coinman1794]

 

My guess as to Why the coins seemed to grade either a 64 or a 65 was that NOT MANY were of such quality as to get anything higher. This seems to follow all that I have read about poorer dies---lack of striking pressures---overuse of those poorer dies. All of the above seem to lead to very few coins that are worthy of "special" grades or "star" quality.

 

 

This observation is true in an isolated examination of a couple of the 1950s dates. But overall, there is no shortage of impressively lustrous Franklins or crisp, fresh surfaces and strikes (though not alwasy FBL) that would lead to lower grades. The only reason Franklins don't grade above MS65 very often is because they are almost alwasy heavily bagmarked and scraped.

 

 

When dealing with the Star designation of Franklins, it's not alwasy toning that gives it the extra eye appeal for the designation. 1949-S and 1959 (P) Franlins sometimes have prooflike or semi-prooflike luster that earns them a Star. Also, NGC is VERY inconsistent with this Star designation (it's the single most inconsistent service they offer), and it's a good idea to ask for a review if you think your coin was qualified.

[kryptonitecomics]

An unofficial sample of the last 77 Frankies I sent in resulted in the following grades and designations:

 

12 in MS64 or 15.58%

45 in MS65 or 58.44%

20 in MS66 or 25.97%

-----------------

2 Stars

14 FBL

 

These were all mint set coins from 1955-1958....I was actually running a much higher percentage of MS65 and MS66 coins but I actually got back 9 of the 12 MS64's in my last submission

 

Still I think this backs up the statement about a high percentage of coins being in the MS65 & MS66 range

[SkyMan]

An unofficial sample of the last 77 Frankies I sent in resulted in the following grades and designations:

 

12 in MS64 or 15.58%

45 in MS65 or 58.44%

20 in MS66 or 25.97%

-----------------

2 Stars

14 FBL

 

These were all mint set coins from 1955-1958....I was actually running a much higher percentage of MS65 and MS66 coins but I actually got back 9 of the 12 MS64's in my last submission

 

Still I think this backs up the statement about a high percentage of coins being in the MS65 & MS66 range

 

I would totally disagree with Shane. By getting the Mint Sets he has already totally short circuited a major issue with Frankies. Most Frankies didn't start out in Mint Sets. Only a very small percentage did. Frankies are/were in rolls/bags. Given their design characteristics they show dings and rub very easily. Many date/mm are notorious for attractive luster but being somewhat chopped up due to rubbing/banging in rolls/bags. The percentage of MS Frankies as a whole in 65 is significantly lower than that in Mint Sets.