Coinbuf

You could always start your own grading service and offer this service.

This is the NGC registry section of the forum, if you want to buy or sell please use the Marketplace section of the forum.

Looks like a normal close AM to me from your photos. The initials are clearly that of a close AM.

Do you also have the same disdain for NGC and its graders for grading those common coins in common grades? You do realize that CAC doesn't pick and choose what gets sent to them, just as NGC or PCGS doesn't choose to not grade common coins in common grades that get sent to them, right?

Zinc rot. spend it before it turns to zinc dust.

Grading is already highly subjective, TPG's do not (and should not) want to open themselves up to that kind of problem. I personally think it is just fine the way it is, leave it to the market to determine the price of problem coins not the TPG's.

What you have bought is a counterfeit, there were no silver eagles struck at the west point mint in 1986, sorry.

As greenstang wrote we would need to see photos of both sides to see the condition, photos should be cropped so that we see more of the coin than the background. From only the obv photo you supplied your coin looks to be lightly circulated and not reprocessed. Here is a screenshot of sales from the Great Collections archives, they have not auctioned any AU examples and only one circulated coin an XF several years ago. But from this you can see there is not much price spread form that XF to a low MS example. If you are planning to try and sell the coin raw I would guess a fair value would be around $75. If you were to send this to NGC for certification and it was graded as AU58 it might fetch more as there is some demand for AU58 examples for the everyman registry sets.

Not initials, just damage to the coin while in circulation.

All ASE (American silver eagle) coins coined in 1986 were produced in the SF mint, there are no W minted coins from that year. Are you sure you are not confusing the designers initials as a mintmark? Edited to add: you posted an ad to buy, who is the seller?

This is part of how a convincing scam artist runs a good scam, you have to convince the mark that you are legit. How better to look legit than to offer a generous return policy and work with ebay to remove any neutral or negative feedback so you keep your feedback score looking pristine. The reason this seller offers such an outstanding return policy is because they know some of the coins they sell are going to be returned, this helps them to avoid or have ebay remove any negative feedback. All I can say is that I've provided plenty of warning on this seller, anyone that buys from them deserves what they get. Edited to add: @Jason Abshier looking at an ebay sellers feedback score is useless if you don't do some digging. Here is a screenshot of Denver Coins Co feedback, take note of the 4 neutral ratings in the past 6 months, if those were not removed for the seller by ebay the score would be less than 100%. Then take a close look at the bottom right of this screenshot, see the verbiage that says revised feedback and that number is 74. That means that 74 buyers left something other than a positive feedback rating which they changed, why it was changed we do not know.

While the original point of this thread is moot, I'm just trying to understand your shorthand. Am I reading this correctly that you paid $34 for the coin raw? And what is GV? the NGC coin explorer shows the price guide at $60.

Here is a timely thread on the PCGS forum that touches on the issue of gradeflation in low circulated grades. I think that Bill's reply toward the end of the thread is the most correct with regards to the coin in question and how it should have been graded. And while we will never know in this case, I suspect that the grade analysis put forth by Bill would be a likely outcome had this been graded in say 1988 or thereabouts. Linky

Vise job, someone took a memorial cent and pressed it into this coin. May have been attempting to create a fake error or perhaps just accidentally.

Not an error, what we call a dryer coin. Coins sometimes get stuck against the barrel of the dryer and scrape or sand off one side like this

No I would not say that, back when the TPG's first setup operations MS65 was a very high grade, I wasn't into slabbed coins then but as I've been told getting an MS67 was almost unheard of. Today MS67 is a very high grade but it is awarded far more frequently than back in the late 80's early 90's when the TPG's were just starting out. And over the past 5ish years I have seen many coins that have been cracked and regraded 2 to even 4 MS grades higher than what the original grade was. I'm not saying those new grades are incorrect or the old grades were correct, but we have seen high profile coins jumping grades with what to me is an alarming frequency. The photo archives on the PCGS system were basically eliminated overnight several years ago because high profile customers of big dealers ((cough) like Legend (cough)) were complaining to Laura about seeing posts on the PCGS forum that involved regrades of their coins. Gradeflation has touched every part of the grading scale, we are seeing coins that in the past would max out at VF30 now being graded as XF, even AU at times. And yes the line between AU and MS has been blurred out of existence, market grading is not about using grading standards it is about pricing coins. Today a grader looks at a coin and says what should this sell for, not what does this grade. There is a reason why PCGS did away with its grading sets as grading sets are not needed under market grading, its noteworthy that CACG has grading sets that they expect their graders to use as a reference when grading. Remember that most graders used to be dealers, so it stands to reason that if you put the foxes in the hen house the eggs may be tampered with.

Die cracks are a fun find and have developed a somewhat cult like following in the past few years during and after covid. But that following is more interested in finding them and then selling not so much in buying them, so it's really a one way market and the buying group is a very small population of collectors which keeps the prices to just a bit over face value.

One more set of photos, these are also from the same thread that I quoted the text from above. CC's photo, the buyers photo and the PCGS result. Bottom line Mike if you have gotten every raw coin you bought from this seller to straight grade at the advertised grade you are either not being honest with us about your results or have been incredibly lucky.

See my post below yours.

This quote was from a discussion on the PCGS forum back in Nov of 2021, they were going by the name Canyon City Coins then. From that discussion: "Beautiful raw coins - they have a really cool way of taking pictures and have a seemingly unlimited supply of cool silver dollars and other coins - even key dates! However, I have now received another coin back from grading and once again - came back cleaned...!! Even their 1921 peace dollars - which are fetching big bucks - have had 2 come back cleaned...! On one coin I saw what I thought were die polishing lines but I guess were hairlines..." And here we can see just how much they juice the photos, first the PCGS TV then the CC or Denver coin photo, it not just the raw coins they manipulate the images of.

There have always been and are today sellers that attempt to deceive buyers that may not be informed; be it coins or vacum cleaners. TPG's have helped to level the playing field at first. But for whatever the reason TPG grading has changed from when they started. CACG is simply resetting back to the earlier standards. So I see is as CACG is a return to the consistency that TPG'S had at inception. Now will the marketplace like that is the question.

I doubt it's fake, just that the photos are juiced and taken in a way to hide any flaws or issues.

Yes Denver Coins, aka (or may still be used) Canyon City Coins, and I think there may have been another name this seller has used in the past on ebay.

The extra metal in the numeral 5 is a die chip. Technically it is an error but so minor that it has no or very limited value, die chips are extremely common on the mid 50's cents here is a definition of a die chip. "Definition: A small piece (less than 4 square millimeters) that falls out of the die face and has no direct connection to the design rim. The missing piece leaves a void in the die face into which coin metal flows. As a result, the coin shows a featureless lump in the affected area. A die chip can be connected to a die crack or it can be freestanding. Die chips frequently develop within narrow interstices in the design, such as the gap between the letters of LIBERTY. Hence the so-called “BIE” errors."

The seller is known to doctor, alter the ebay photos to portray problem coins as better than they are, look at the background the coin is sitting on, way over saturated. How many of this sellers raw coins that you have purchased in the past have you had graded by NGC or PCGS? How did the TPG's grades line up with the price you paid? I would love to see one of this sellers coins both with the ebay auction photos and the photos from NGC or PCGS, please post one or a few if you have them. I could not even begin to guess the coin's worth from photos that I know are heavily altered, I would need real unaltered photos to make that determination.