On purple Morgan dollar toning

nwcs

I know that in general, the color purple is not necessarily a great color to see on a Morgan as many times it can be the indicator of AT. However, I got a morgan this weekend with some purple on the rev, but also with subtle other colors such as green and dark blue on the rev. How closely do the graders look at the devices and fields when looking at a coin with a color that is not usual (but certainly not impossible)? I submitted this coin this afternoon so it should be there by week's end. But I'm curious if it'll have the usual 5-10 second look or a little longer look to see how the color lies inside the devices and the transitions.

Thank you for your time,

Neil

homerunhall

First...purple is not the most common color, but it does appear on Morgans from time to time. It definitely can occur naturally.

Second...Here's the truth about grading time. A good grader can grade a coin very, very quickly...often in a matter of seconds.

I have a story that may illustrate what an expert can do. Over the years, I've examine and purchased many coin collections. I often can view an entire collection and make a guess as to the value within 5 minutes. I have often been in the position of looking at a deal, knowing it's worth say $40,000 within 5 minutes, and then taking another hour to carefully examine the collection so as to not insult the people who owned the coins with a quick offer. In other words, I know the deal is worth $40,000 within minutes, but I took another hour before I said, "I can pay $40,000.' and I did this to be polite.

The fact is that most of the PCGS graders have examined literally millions of coins. And they have seen many of the same types, looks, colors...even purple coins...over and over and over again. They know a coin's grade within seconds. That's just the way it is...and they could spend 10 minutes on each coin and the grading wouldn't be any different.

Now there are a few unusal coins and/or circumstances where a grader may spend several minutes on a coin...but in 99% of the cases it only takes 5 or 10 seconds to get the job done.