The grade calls in here are all within a few points of each other, so here is the other half of that question: what 1835 half cents have actually been closing at, with dates, so you can see what the spread between a 45 and a 53 is worth in money. These are eBay sold listings from the last 90 days, 30 results. Three came back in the same search that are not comparable and I left them out: an 1855 half cent, a lot of three damaged ones, and a counterstamped piece. Raw, grade stated by the seller: F++ $60.00 (15 Sep) VF $69.00 (17 Sep), $82.20 (13 Sep), $89.10 (4 Sep), $91.99 (7 Sep), $100.00 (1 Sep) XF sharp $115.70 (4 Sep) AU $149.50 (1 Sep), $175.00 (6 Sep), $177.50 (8 Sep) Choice unc $205.69 (16 Sep), $277.95 (31 Aug) In a holder: PCGS XF40 $125.00 (10 Sep) NGC AU Details $120.00 (2 Sep) ANACS AU50 $148.03 (2 Sep, auction) PCGS AU50 $274.95 (11 Sep, buy it now) ANACS AU55 $680.00 (14 Sep, buy it now) NGC MS62 BN $575.00 (15 Sep, buy it now) No grade in the title, for scale: $31.00, $73.02, $80.00, $110.00. Problem coins: low grade $20.00, VF details with a planchet flaw and staining $39.00, holed and plugged $36.00. Two things in that list are worth more than the 45 versus 50 argument. First, the same three characters traded at two prices nine days apart. An ANACS AU50 brought $148.03 at auction on 2 Sep and a PCGS AU50 brought $274.95 buy it now on 11 Sep. That is 1.9x on the same stated grade, and the difference is the selling format, not the coin. Any single published value for this date is mostly an average of those two very different kinds of sale. Second, and this is the one I would actually think about. The NGC AU Details coin brought $120.00, which is below the raw AU coins at $149 to $177. Mr.Q called a reverse rim ding and a nick on the lower collar. If a grader reads those as damage rather than wear, the coin lands in that Details lane instead of a straight AU50, and on these numbers that is roughly $120 against roughly $150 raw or $148 to $275 slabbed. So the ding moves more money than whether the room settles on 45, 50 or 53. For what it is worth I would have said AU50 as well, and raw at that grade the recent closings sit around $150 to $180. Caveat so nobody leans on this too hard: these are eBay closings, not auction house results, and every grade in a title is a seller opinion unless a holder is named. The slabbed rows are the only ones where the grade is somebody else's word.
