Grading Morgans, Help.
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Posts: 395
I'm having trouble grading them. I can't find a decent discription that details what to look at and look for in the EF-MS range. I also can't find any high quality pictures that either highlight what to look for or are good sold example to go with the descriptions.
~Richard Dorrance
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Anyone else?
<<Try looking here...Great site....(forum members?) Try this site??
Tom
Morgans are easy.
Full rims = Good
2 lines in cotton balls = FINE.
Wheat grains separated = VF.
Some luster in protected areas = XF.
There is really more key design elements that you must evalulate to get the proper grade but what I am posting will let you get a good idea of the general grade at a quick instant 2 second glance.
i totally respect your initiative--grading is the most important thing to learn when starting a morgan collection.
when i returned to collecting and decided to start a morgan set, here's what i did....First i read the ana standards for every morgan grade. next i picked one grade, (EF-b/c only 2 grades: 40, 45) & reread the standard while looking at all (PCGS ONLY!!!) EF morgans on Heritage (filtered by grade). I then began to compare EF's to VF's on Heritage simultaneously applying the ANA VF standards, then on down the line to F, VG, & G. I then started working on AU and MS (which is tougher b/c luster plays an important role--difficult to detect in a pic). I logged in alot of hours with this exercise, easily looking at thousands of coins.
I also practiced by "guessing the grade" with my dealer's inventory. The best practice however is actually submitting coins yourself, especially if you have a F/VF liner, 63/64 liner, etc... Submitting your own coins will force you to look more closely at a coin than say, a coin in a dealer's inventory.
I would also recommend getting a feel for what "cleaned" coins look like so you can filter through all the trash at shows and on ebay. The way I did this was to go again to Heritage and look at all the ANACS net cleaned coins, comparing them to the junk on ebay. 1889cc is a good starting date for this exercise on Heritage. also, to make life easier, use Heritage's filter and search feature & ascend/ descend by grade/ service etc...so you don't waste time.
once you get a standard down pat, and submit a few coins which you judged correctly, you got it...from then on, it just a question of refinement.
Hope this helps!