Grading gold indians..

mwasham

What kind of grade would you give this? It looks at a minimum uncirculated ( I can't find any wear ) but I'm not experienced enough to know how high up the MS6+ chain it would go

Also - there is dirt in the "United States of America" lettering on the reverse. Could that mean this was once dirty and it has been cleaned? Or is that fairly common?

High Res Obverse
High Res Reverse
The pictures are fairly large so it may take awhile to load..

Thanks for any assistance!

FC57Coins

Oy vey!

You picked one of the toughest coins to grade - I would go to the PCGS book for help! Does anyone have any citations on these pieces???

Frank

mrdq

I don't know gold but I feel compelled to tell you those pictures are great! Nice job.

dragon

mwasham,

The $2.5 and $5 Indians are sometimes tricky pieces to correctly grade. Even the major services have a tough time with them as I have seen pieces go from AU58 to MS62 and vice versa.

The first areas to look for wear are the eagles neck feathers, upper breast feathers, and upper tip of the eagles left wing (which also is sometimes very weakly struck). On the obverse, look at the indians cheekbone, the eyebrow, and the upper and lower headdress and the feathers hanging in front of the ear.

Also, many $2.5 and $5 Indians still retain a lot of lustre even when circulated which also makes it tricky for many people.

Also, the first area that generally will show the numerous handling marks of circulation is the raised fields on the reverse, also a prime grade sensitive area for showing marks on uncirulated pieces. Hope this helps.

Dragon

darktone

mwasham, sorry but I am going to have to say AU on this one. As dragon pointed out the cheek is one of the first places to show wear and I think it is wear and not strike weakness on your coin because of the discoloration on the high point of the cheek also on the reverse on the top of the wing and eagles breast there looks to be wear there also. I am no expert on these but I have owned a few of these in low grade MS and AU. mike

mwasham

Thanks for the information!
Think it would be worth sending in to get it slabbed? (basically if it's possible to go above 61-62 it would be worth it )

Placid

Looks au to me. The dark color areas on the indians cheek and on the eagle wing near the body are why I say probably au from the picture.

It also looks cleaned, too many hairlines or small scratches in the fields.

jom

The coin is AU at best. Look at the top of the eagles shoulder....it's worn. There doesn't seem to be any luster left either. Dragon is correct in saying many retain the luster even in AU but many of these were made with little luster to begin with. After looking at many of these pieces over the years I can say many seemingly AU coins with the luster will be graded as high as MS62. You'll also see an "overpopulation" of NGC graded indians. I don't know why that is but just look at Ebay or Heritage inventory. The VAST majority of these are NGC. Weird...

jom

HuliganRS

I suggest buying graded pieces!

I got burned on $2.50 Indian...

mwasham

Thanks everyone!

I got a real good price on it - so even if it is AU thats not too bad