Extremely Fine. Sometimes, they are ungrammatically called "Extra Fine." AU for About Uncirculated, but Au or au for gold, though among collectors of ancients, it is AV for gold.
lincoln64 - Just to be sure here - the title of your post list VF - XF. These are two entirely different grades. But your question in your post list EF - EF - yes these are the same.
If I could add a similar question: Where does BU fit in on the scale of 1-70? Brilliant Uncirculated? is that specifically tied to some area of MS quality? It seems to me that BU appears to be the most widely misused grade.
BU is supposed to be Brilliant Uncirculated. By true standards any coin described as BU must be a minimum of MS-60. Now many dealers and sellers have been using BU as Borderline Uncirculated. This is a gimmick to make an AU coin seem better than it is. The proper use should be like this. UNC = MS-60 Brilliant Unc= MS-63 Gem Unc= MS-65
AH-HA! that explains it. Thank you for that information. I see a lot of people advertise AU/BU coins, etc. And I think to myself, that there is a WORLD of difference (supposedly) between those two standards... but if they are calling it Borderline Uncirculated.... well then, there is no difference between about and borderline... so BU should properly be MS-63 I did not know that, so I thank you for teaching me today.
I never thought about sellers using BU as borderline uncirculated..... I'm thinking i'm going to be more carefull in the near future when I start buying again, and watch out for any auctions that say BU.
Well sir; that is why I am here. It shames me that my fellow dealers allow their standards to be compromised in terms of how they describe their coins. In the words of YODA, there is no try. We either do it, or don't do it. When I look for a dealer to do business with, I judge them by their actions not their words. Many concern themselves with making a dollar instead of making a customer. While the dollar may pay the bills today, the customer will keep you in business for a long time.
UNC = MS-60 Brilliant Unc= MS-63 Gem Unc= MS-65 This is the way I always interpreted the various MS grades, and it seems to work well for me. I have also used "Choice Uncirculated" in place of "Gem Uncirculated" because many people (in eBay auctions especially) are constantly using the word "Gem" to describe coins that are significantly below that grade and not always even Uncirculated.
I think this is the common usage today. Have the ANA standards changed? I seem to remember at one time, it was like this: MS-60: Unc MS-63: Select uncirculated MS-65: Choice uncirculated MS-67: Gem uncirculated MS-70: Perfect uncirculated Then again, this was before all the additional intermediate grades sprung up. And frankly, the 11 numerical grades from 60 to 70 (inclusive) make the adjectives obsolete in my opinion.
Ziggy, Although I agree with you that the numbering system removed the need for the adjectives, there are venues (such as eBay) where those adjectives are still used to search for a particular grade coin. Not everyone uses the numbering system there (and many of those that do don't use them properly anyway). But I have found that using the appropriate adjectives with the numbered grade is a good idea.
Susan, it seems to me that the use of adjectives is more often for obfuscation than for trying to honestly describe a coin. Plus the words "select," "choice" and "gem" mean different things to different people. I've seen so many "choice," "gem" and "PQ++++" coins that are at best MS-61 (and quite possibly AU) that it makes me want to burst out laughing...and feeling bad for folks who don't know how to grade coins and buy the hype. The folks who use the adjectives these days, more often than not, don't really know how to properly *apply* those adjectives (do they say "This is about an MS-63, so I'll call it "select BU?"), and that's why on the rare occasions I go after raw "uncirculated" stuff I won't bid/offer more than choice AU money at best. Then again, some people are way off with the numerical grades, too. Not long ago I saw someone asking something like a thousand dollars for a raw "MS-65" Indian cent which was a harshly cleaned G-4.
For what it's worth, I have always used the adjectives in conjunction with the correct numerical grade. I have used "Brilliant" quite often but "Choice" and "Select" only a few times. And, yes, these adjectives mean different things to different people, but so do the numerical grades. I know that many eBay sellers use these terms to death (PQ is so badly abused, it would be funny if it wasn't so sad). I also explain why I feel a coin is a certain condition in every auction and even for every coin in a lot. I can't answer for what other sellers do, but I know that I have never knowingly used any of these adjectives or numerical grades dishonestly or in an attempt to oversell a coin. Just like everything else, here is a great tool that is so abused that it's losing its usefulness.
But that's different. If used with the proper numerical grade, it gives me at least a little confidence that the seller knows a little something about coins and coin grading. Most of the time the sellers I've seen have no clue about proper use of these adjectives and they do more harm than good. This is part of what makes eBay a tough venue for ethical and knowledgeable sellers dealing with high-grade raw coins. The bids tend (more often than not) to meet the least common denominator.
