2017-11-17 Fri

A 1943-S Walking Liberty Half Dollar, graded MS 65 by PCGS was sold for five times it’s published price at an auction just because of its grading insert and the plastic holder.

The coin was sold after 37 bids by 8 bidders on 12th November at an online auction by GreatCollections. It was finally sold for $1,181.25. The actual value of the same coin in a current PCGS holder with a basic grading insert is only $225.

The offered coin was encapsulated in a first generation PCGS holder along with a white grading label printed on white. It also had an unribbed cardstock, made using a crude dot matrix printer. Such cardstocks were used in the initial years of PCGS in February 1986. These first generation holders and labels are very rare to find.

The earliest generation of PCGS holders was called “rattler” because the coin used to move within the holder making a rattling sound. PCGS upgraded the printer for Generation 1.1 by February 1986. These labels were only used for a week. They started grading labels printed on pale green ribbed cardstock for Generation 1.2 after that. The latest Generation 6.0S, with Secure Plus Label and embedded hologram, was introduced in May 2015.