Slabbed Lincoln cents

coppercoins

I just got a rather rare opportunity and spent most of the day yesterday and today taking advantage of it. My local dealer went to a show over this past weekend and bought a box with 275 slabbed cents, all MS66 grades from PCGS, NGC, ANACS, and ICG. There were 35 PCGS, 65 NGC, 155 ANACS, and 20 ICG slabs, all were wheats dated from 1942-1958. I looked through them for die varieties, and while looking I graded each coin. This was MY result...

PCGS:

MS64 - 2
MS65 - 30
MS66 - 3

NGC:

AU58 - 6
MS64 - 6
MS65 - 48
MS66 - 5

ANACS:

AU58 - 5
MS63 - 8
MS64 - 34
MS65 - 105
MS66 - 3

ICG :

MS62 - 1
MS63 - 3
MS64 - 5
MS65 - 11
MS66 - 0

I grade cents using the true standards as printed by the ANA. In grading, MS63 can have lack of luster, spots, moderate to heavy scattered or numerous light marks, and lack of strike quality. MS66 MUST have complete, full strike, full color without staining, and no noticeable flaws to the naked eye....heavy bag marks, or longer and lighter marks in the fields that affect the luster pattern. Wear (AU) is determined by surface breaks at the high points - i.e., brightly shiny cheek, jaw, and ear tip with hard outlines around them. Obvious stacking wear.

Many of the lower end MS coins had at least one detrimental heavy mark visible to the naked eye at arm's length - a long gash, a heavy gash in the ridge lines of the detail in the coat, gashes in the fields, etc. A really pathetic group, and a sign that either their grading is worthless (all of them) or mine is way too hard.

kieferscoins

The ANA grading book is basically worthless for the MS grades, especially Lincoln cents. It is good for circulated coins, but not for MS-63 and higher.

Hard to believe any of the services would grade a cent MS-66, if you think it really is an AU-58.

Cameron Kiefer

agfox

Your eyes must be very tired. That took a lot of effort. The results are very consistant with your grading. What do you personally think, you're too hard, or they are too soft? Personally I believe they are too soft, I have a few NGC examples that are very overgraded. It can be all services, I only have NGC lincolns for some odd reason, so that's my reference.

coppercoins

Well, actually the book lays out the guidelines for ALL uncirculated grades. Aside from that completely, the book put out by PCGS for grading and counterfeit detection more or less agrees with the ANA standards - neither of which happento mention that a coin with obvious wear can be an MS66. Nor do either mention that a coin so weakly struck it barely has ear detail can be an MS66. Nor does it mention that a coin with black carbon spots visible half a room away could get MS66.

I might be able to take some of these home for photos but can't really promise anything...they aren't mine, and I wouldn't want to get stuck with them....not even at $5 each. But if I can take some of them home to photo I will, and I will post them here for all to see. EVERY ONE of the companies had at least three to five examples that WAY missed the mark, no subjectivity about it - absolutely NO WAY they could grade 66....but the labels for every coin in the box said MS66RD.

coppercoins

Agfox - It was an educational experience because never had I seen so many 66 slabbed Lincolns in the same place at the same time. A number of the 65 grades I gave the coins could be my tightness....take ALL the 65 and 66 grades and pool them together, and you still have a third of the group that cannot be 66 with your eyes shut. REALLY and TRULY there were coins in there that had OBVIOUS wear. All were red, more or less, but some had REAL WEAR...there's no excuse for that.

To answer your question - it's probably a half-half compromise. Some of my undergrading combined with their overgrading led to the mismatch of grade versus slab. That and the fact that I am more of a technical grader and I understand that services market grade, more or less...but there's not much difference in modern Lincolns, especially common date stuff. Nearly 100 of the coins were 1954S and 1955D...just really common stuff I would expect to see (and in that grade) out of just about any $5-$10 BU roll.

I am going to relax my standards just a bit, but I can't see spending the money people spend on slabbed coins if all of them match out to the grades these coins got. Most of the coins in the box were worth less than $2 each, but the slabbing fees were higher than that.

ODDLY ENOUGH....there wre also some Franklins and Washington silver quarters in the group - about three dozen of them, ranging from MS64 to MS66. I had another guy cover the grades and hand them to me one at a time, and I graded them to see where I was with their standards...I got ONE wrong with their slab, an NGC 64 1942 quarter that I graded 65 because it was rather mark free and had some peripheral toning that should have knocked it up a notch. None of the hit damage was prime focal and none of it was major. An undergrade if you ask me....but I got all the other coins in the 30-some odd correct to the slabbed grade.

Now...I grade three dozen coins within a point of the unseen slab grade that aren't even in my specialty, then I say that 250+ out of 275 Lincolns graded 66 are overgraded. I think there's someone feeding the Lincoln market a bunch of badly graded coins.

wingedliberty

The grading standards for Lincoln cents have become more liberal in the last 5 years. This has to do with a number of factors, including heavier submission volume and the popularity of the series. Commercial grading standards are different from those that many collectors demand.


Brian.

coppercoins

I managed to borrow 7 of the slabs for photos and will be doing so some time this weekend. I didn't pick and choose, necessarily, because I didn't separate them when looking through them....so I reached in and grabbed a handful to take home and study closer. I might be able to do it a second time if I can get these back by Tuesday.

More to come...