Okay, I am annoyed. Some here may even be some of the people I am annoyed at. Dunno. Here is the thing. I use two different books for grading coins. US Coins (Redbook) and Numismatic Grading Standards. When it comes to Sitting Liberty Dollars they both agree. According to those sources: before ANY Sitting Liberty Dollar can be termed 'Very Good.' at least 3 letters of the word 'LIBERTY' on the shield MUST be readable. before ANY Sitting Liberty Dollar can be termed 'Fine.' all 7 letters of the word 'LIBERTY' on the shield MUST be visible. before ANY Sitting Liberty Dollar can be termed 'Very Fine,' all 7 of the letters must be clear and strong. So let me say I am incredibly annoyed to see hundreds of supposedly professional sources listing on Ebay coins with NO letters visible on the shield whatsoever (some without even a trace of the shield itself showing) and describing the coin as fine or very fine. Go to the Ampex ad (Ebay) for Sitting Liberty Dollarss in Very Fine, 'buy it now'. Take a good look at the picture of the sample they show. Letters? What letters? Worse, in example after example I am seeing slabbed Sitting Liberty Dollars, both NCG and PCGS graded F15 or even VF without a trace of letters on the shield, or just one. Was there a major grading standards change for the Sitting Liberty Dollar which I somehow missed? Both grading services advertise they use ANA standards, so how the heck do they slab a Sitting Liberty without even a shield to carry the Liberty letters as an F15? Yes, sure, they have pretty eagles. So what? The coin reverse is not mentioned in those grading standards, so who cares about it? The dumb bird doesn't even get mentioned until we get to the XF grade. No shield, it is AG, a shield with no letters on the shield it is a G. Adding to the annoyance is those claiming VG, F or VF for coins that barely make G, is they list the coins at the price a VG, F or a VF would deserve. What I am saying is please stop over grading. I have no idea what to about the over graded PCGS and NGC Sitting Liberties I see for sale beyond saying I wouldn't touch them at the grade given them. Clearly to me both grading companies need to reveal by what arcane magic they give a junk coin an F or VF grade. Let me also say, thank you to the honest guys and gals who (like me) follow the ANA standards and list a coin with no shield, or only 2 liberty letters showing as AG or G rather than claim it is a VF12. Yes, I did find some of those on the Ebay. Honest vendors on Ebay. Imagine that.
I have photographed many, many coins. I don't encounter that problem. Here is one I photo'd last week. Much smaller than the dollar coin, but there the letters are. Photos are everything when selling online. I don't even consider buying coins with fuzzy photos. And that isn't what I wrote about. All of the ones I wrote of (i.e., AGs rated as F, etc.) had clear photos which my Mozilla browser can easily enlarge. If I say the coin didn't have readable letters, or evidence of a shield being there beyond a worn spot, trust me, they didn't. They were just AGs claiming to be VGs or VFs.
This topic comes up all the time and not just with seated coins. Everyone has a different standard and that's a good thing. Somewhere in the middle is probably about right. With Seated coins, there is a large swing in grading opinions. When we are talking about PCGS or NGC slabs, in lower grades, you need to look at one coin at a time. I know that they miss some but I feel they get it right most of the time.
ANA Grading Standards "A few letters in LIBERTY are clear." There is no mention of the phrases "before ANY" or "at least 3". ANA Grading Standards "Some letters in LIBERTY are clear." There is no mention of the phrases "before ANY" or "all 7 letters". ANA Grading Standards "LIBERTY and scroll are bold." There is no mention of the phrases "before ANY" or "all 7 of the letters must be clear and strong." Personally, I don't use the Red Book for grading, and to be perfectly honest, I don't collect any of the seated coinage, but your "definitions" are slightly different from those in the ANA book. Let's face it, when it comes to the use of specific wording, even then, interpretations can vary widely. By the way, did you happen to read the comments in the Red Book about gradeflation? Welcome to the world of numismatics! Oh, and let's not forget SleazeBay. Chris
Yeah, mea culpa. I added the words ANY and MUST. Also I confess I used Redbook for the comment about the eagle (reverse). Too lazy at 3:40am to haul out the other book for the quoting in the post. After a little sleep and some coffee I hauled out my ANA "Grading Standards" and acknowledge that book does talk about the reverse all the way down to the AG3 level. Now that I have done that and comparing the two books I see there is a clear disconnect between the two, which I had not picked up on previously. Redbook: F-12 Fine - "All seven letters of Liberty visible, though weak." ANA Grading Standards: F-12 Fine - "Some details show in bottom folds of gown, hair and and cap and at shoulder and breast. Some letters in Liberty are clear. Foot and sandal are separated." There is of course a huge disconnect between 'all seven letters are visible' and 'some letters are clear.' In ANA's book we get all the way up to VF 20 before we see, ".., LIBERTY and shield lines are visible but possibly weak at center." Redbook VF 20, "LIBERTY strong, but slight wear visible on its ribbon." ANA's book VF 30, ".., LIBERTY and scroll are bold..." Interesting. My following the Redbook when bidding may have resulted in my acquiring much better coins than if I followed the ANA book. I had thought they were the same standards. Ooops. Not until today did I realize how big their grading standards disconnect is. New rule for self! Use Redbook standards when buying, use only ANA Standards when selling. Okay, my apologies to the grading companies. I can see how they did it. LoL. The ANA guide clearly allows them more latitude in grading than the one liner in Redbook does. That doesn't take the heat off the independents sellers of non-slabbed coins however. Many of the coins I spent the last two days reviewing before making my selections were billed as Fine or VF, but actually look a lot more like the G4 coin pictured in the ANA Grading Standards book. Also of interest is clearly there were/are some others who are selling who used Redbook in assigning their grades. I picked up some coins which by Redbook standards are at least VF 20 and they were advertised as VF, but after looking at the pictures again and this time using the ANA book, heck they may be VF-30 or higher. As Spock would say, fascinating..
superc - You said above - "Both grading services advertise they use ANA standards," - but that is not true. NGC and PCGS both have entirely different grading standards from each other, and both are entirely different than the ANA grading standards. And both of those statements I just made have always been true. What I don't understand is why you made the comments you did in this thread, after everything I said, and that you responded to, in this thread - http://www.cointalk.com/threads/price-list-s-and-grading-standards.239318/ Did you suddenly forget everything that was said in that other thread I just linked above ?
Well I hadn't seen your last post there until just now. The statement about both saying they use ANA standards was said because I had been told that by several coin shop operators. I agree that it falls flat the more I dig into it. Regarding the APMEX sales of Liberty Dollars VG, here is what they wrote me back. "Thank you for your inquiry. The grading books give guides for technical grading. Sometimes this is in line with the market, but other times it is not. For Seated Liberty dollars, as long as the coin has full rims, the market will accept it as a Very Good. There are many Seated Dollars in PCGS and NGC Very Good-8 holders that have full rims, but do not have three letters from Liberty visible" I now fully acknowledge that Redbook has tougher grading standards than does the "Grading Standards" book. I truly thought otherwise when this thread began. I know better now, and it isn't just the Seated Liberty Dollars that applies to. [A result and recent realization is that by following Redbook standards when purchasing and grading my purchases for past years a lot of my coins were graded by me possibly a little low "Grading Standards" standards. I find I should now regrade lots of my coins and that will take some time. Ouch.] Regarding the TPGs and changing of rules. I noted (on their website) yesterday PCGS now offers a coin restoration service. Coins restored by them will be slabbed and certified by them. I do not know if the slab containing such a coin will also have a comment indicating the coin was altered or restored by them. That being said, I am toying with joining them and sending them some silver junk (fire damaged coins (acquired pretty cheaply)) to see what comes back. So in conclusion my original belief which inspired this post was 100% wrong. Only Redbook expects 3 letters to be readable as a bare minimum. I will continue to look for bargains on Ebay, by seeking coins graded by Redbook standards at the same price as coins graded by ANA standards.
That is not true either. The ANA invented market grading and their grading standards books have been based on market grading since 1987. OK, but which "book" are you referring to ? There are several, and all of them are different from each of the others. And that's not even taking into account the specialized books that only deal with one specific series. Before you do that, you need to understand that PCGS will only grade & slab problem free coins, even if you have them attempt to restore the coins. They will allow you to pay them to try and restore a problem coin, but it is also important for you to understand that once a coin is a problem coin, it is always a problem coin. And no amount of restoration done by anybody will ever change that. But like I said, they will allow you to pay them for it, and then they will allow you to also pay them to put your coin in one of their problem coin slabs. Then you may wish to get the new ANA grading standards book. Their 7th edition was just released not long ago. But keep in mind the TPGs, none of them, grade coins according to ANA standards.
Op this may give you an idea as to how far back the dream of one standard for all goes: A SCHEME FOR A UNIFIED STANDARD OF CLASSIFYING THE CONDITION OF COINS. [excerpt] "Since assuming the office of Secretary of this association many members have asked me to inaugurate some scheme for a uniform standard of classifiying the condition of coins..." [excerpted] H.O Grandberg NUMISMATIST Feb. 1913
I remember looking through it in a book store and wondering why line drawings were better than Photograde.
Because you should never try to grade a coin using a photograph of a single coin in any given grade for a comparison.
With the ANA grading guide it also depends on what edition of the book you are using. The standards have dropped from the first edition to the latest one. And the standards of the letters of Liberty that needed to be visible were set by Photograde back in 1970, years before the first ANA guide. (I'm also of the generation that learned grading for the seated coins requiring three letters of LIBERTY, or partial letters totaling three letters, to be a VG, all seven letters, but the I could be weak to be a Fine, and all letters bold to be a VF. I still grade most seated coins that way, but not 20 centers.)
I don't think I ever graded a coin that matched exactly to Photograde. If that is your point GDJMSP then I agree. But I always found it easy to get a bracket-it's better than VF but not EF. The only thing I ever found in the ANA's line drawings was empathy for Norman Bates.
