I just cataloged forty Morgan dollars in "SteveIvyRareCoinCo" flips!

[James_OldeTowne]

They had various dates in 1977 written on them in ballpoint ink. Kind of neat. This is not a bashing thread, but let us just say that grading for these common date Morgans is a little more conservative today.... It was kind of funny to see coins he graded MS-67 that are only MS-63 to MS-64 now.

 

One aggravating complaint, though. Every single miserable lousy coin was in a PVC flip! Argh!

[michael]

wow from ms 67 in 1977 to just choice unc currently 2008 quite a difference but i think this is due to mucho greater prices and collectors now are more sophistaced

 

if they are going to pay really strong money and this is okie with them the coin has to be all there and then some gradewise with amazing eye appeal and extraspecial extraordinary properties to boot

 

 

 

but the PVC flips man oh man to add insult to ingury the original buyer of these coins was doubled shafted right up the wazoo as way overgraded from original ms67 superb gem unc to only choice unc today ms 63 and then ruined by pvc flip

 

 

[cpm9ball]

Oh, horror of horrors! Tell the owner I'll pay melt sight unseen.

 

Chris

[James_OldeTowne]

The surprising thing, too, is that out of the forty coins, eight to ten of them are cleaned, yet to a coin, were graded MS-65! This is where one can say that it's pretty nice to have the grading services available, isn't it?

[DirtyGoldMan]

My most heartfelt condolences.

[Oldtrader3]

I remember the bad old days with piles (literally) of MS65??, BU (beat up!, scuffed!, spotted!) Morgans in Paramount and other holders at coin stores in California which might grade MS60 to 63 today, on a good day. All being sold for $500. on up for anything but a common date.

[Conder101]

1977? The ANA Grading guide, the first time the MS grading standards were written, didn't come out until Nov of that year and it had no standards for MS-67. The first grading service to start using MS grades was still two years in the future and official standards for MS-67 didn't exist until 1980. In 1977 there were no standards and MS-67 could be anything you wanted it to be. In fact about the only people using MS grades at that time was Paramount. (I'm not sure but I believe Steve Ivy was connected with Paramount in some way.)

[James_OldeTowne]

I think Brown & Dunn came out in 1958? It was about useless for uncirculated coins (it used line images, if I recall). I think photograde came out some years later, maybe 1970?

 

Despite a lack of published standards, I'd think even in 1977, one would have realized that a cleaned coin could not possibly grade MS-65, much less MS-67, as some of the dollars were graded. And a few of the MS-65s were high AU!

[Conder101]

I think Brown & Dunn came out in 1958? It was about useless for uncirculated coins (it used line images, if I recall). I think photograde came out some years later, maybe 1970?

Correct, and Photograde wasn't of any use for uncirculated coins either because it only went up through AU.

 

Despite a lack of published standards, I'd think even in 1977, one would have realized that a cleaned coin could not possibly grade MS-65, much less MS-67, as some of the dollars were graded. And a few of the MS-65s were high AU!

Of course a lot of dealers at the time were selling cleaned AU's as Uncs, and there were pretty much only two grades of Uncirculated at the time, Unc and BU. MS was not a term that most collectors were familiar with and the numbers didn't have any real meaning and few people knew what they meant. About the only people who did were the copper specialists, not the dollar people. It was obvious that a 67 would be better than a 65, but what was a 65? A slider? a typical Unc, a Gem? That kind of situation allows for abuse and the term 65 could be applied to coins which definitely would not meet todays standards of 65. But things like that have always been true. It can be very tricky sometimes comparing coin descriptions from one era to another because often the same terms would have very different meanings. Coin grades were not rigidly defined. Go back to the turn of the 20th century and look at coin descriptions in auction catalogs. A coin might be described as a Very Fine specimen, track it down to day and it might be Uncirculated? Why? becaus when they said Very Fine that was exactly what they meant, this was an exceptionaly nice coin! Or they might call a coin uncirculated, or "nearly proof" and today those sme coins are called XF or AU.

 

Sorry I'm getting carried away. Suffice it to say that from 1977 it does not surprise me to see cleaned AU's that were called MS-65 at the time. (Wasn't that one of the reasons for the calling for the ANA grading guide and later the grading services? Because dealers were selling people coins calling them Unc and then later when the collectors went to sell them being told they were only AU?)

[shirohniichan]

At times like this "the good ol' days" don't look so good, do they?

 

We all wish we could go back in time and cherry-pick 19th century types coins, early commems, and other coins at bargain prices. The fact is that many who inherit collections put together before the big, "evil" slabbers came along bought junk with high grades written on the flips they came in. It used to be UNC, BU, and GEM BU when it came to supposedly mint state coins, but many were cleaned, whizzed, or otherwise impaired.

 

It would be great to have been a collector with today's knowledge back then, but the run-of-the-mill collector could easily have been screwed back then.

 

To clarify things, plastic didn't solve everything. In the early days of slabbing a collector could buy an ACG "MS65" coin that was similarly overgraded, but one could also find a PCI AU58 that was really a PF63.

[Oldtrader3]

I shopped for gold a lot in Toronto in the late '60's. An EF coin could be anything from XF40 to MS62 by today's market grading standards. What a mine field!