new to ancients - NGC certification

Bingo! Couldn't have said it any better myself! I LOVE the history and the detailed research and reading that's involved, not if the one minor issue with the coin takes it to an AU63.

That being said I do love me a spectacular example of a hammered coin!

 

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How many of us actually have seen a coin for which this is not true? Even those beautiful Boscoreales aureii get 'details' for being located in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ancient coins could be graded using a 'footnotes' scale. The more footnotes you have to add to describe a coin accurately and fairly beyond the simple VF or EF, the worse the coin does on the 'footnotes' scale. Nice ancient coins require a sentence to describe the grade - not two letters. MOST ancients need a paragraph.

 

A serious question for our more recent converts from the modern hobby: Assume I have two MS coins of the same type but one was MS61 and the other MS66. I break them out of their slabs and carry them in my pocket for a while until they are fairly EF. Can you tell which one was once MS66 and which was not? Do modern collectors care or are things like strike depth/details meaningless at EF45? Why do we not see coins graded EF 44 or 46 if we must have MS64 and 66?

 

On a modern coin, once there is wear, the other factors become significantly less important. The 61 was probably graded lower because of marks, hairlines, poor luster, and things like that. Once the surfaces receive wear, the luster is removed. You expect a circulated coin to have contact marks - so those are unimportant to the grade. They may affect value if there are a lot of them, or they are unattractive. The coin is predominantly graded on the amount of wear it has received.

We don't use 44 or 46 or any of the intermediate circulated grades out of tradition, mostly. There isn't really any reason why not.

 

Bravo! So true

 

It's a terrific coin, but I also think an AU grade is definitely pushing it---but I ALWAYS tend to grade conservatively, whether Ancients or even Moderns.

I generally 'ignore' grading on Ancients a bit and go after those that simply have great eye-appeal and interest me at the time....although that eye-appeal does seem to fall into the EF area LOL

 

Grading this coin is a matter of opinion. How do you factor die wear (rust & flow lines) into the equation of grading? Both of these factors change how an ancient coin looks. The only piece missing for me is a banker's mark.
PS the coin is in an Artemide Aste auction graded SPL (EF).

 

Hey welcome to the team.
Like everyone else said, its just a personal choice wether to buy NGC coins or not.
I am not a full time collector and still young so I dont have regular funds for coins, so when I do buy them I usually get NGC coins since I simply believe it looks neat in a case with a clear description. Someone else might hate that - but do what is financially and personally wise for yourself, as long as you are happy I sat at stores and uploaded photos of raw coins and after a few replies made the non NGC purchase with the safety of knowing that collectors here with decades of experience certified it.
I collect NGC and have been received and welcomed here whole heartedly for a while now which is very nice. We are all still collectors after all.

I am attaching a few of my NGC coins for you

 

If all coins of a type start out the same (pretty much true with US coins) and "wear" produces effects on a single scale (more, or less, worn, as opposed to additional dimensions with say dings or color, or digs in more or less important places on the design), then (and only then) "grades" based on wear make sense. As others have noted, for ancients there are several other factors at least as important as grade. Think of that as a positive. The tyranny of "grade" has almost ruined US coin collecting. In US collecting everyone is trained to think that ''55" is a poor grade, hardly worth owning, even if it looks to an untrained eye a lot like a "62".
With ancients there is far more leeway to like whatever appeals to you. If you come from collecting US coins, try to forget what you know about "grade" and look at the coin instead of the slab. In US coins that is very hard to do. I'll bet when you see a slabbed US coin you look at the grade on the slab *before* you look at the coin! Why bother looking at the coin at all? The slab number tells you what it is worth and how much you should like it. On the other hand, if an ancient coin is not slabbed, you have the luxury of looking at the coin! A revolutionary idea! Look at the coin!