“Circulation” wear from sitting in a non-PVC flip

Pardon me, but that is not 100% accurate, At all.
Define luster, without the tired cartwheel stuff.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

If it does not to you, I'm good.
I realize though, that I'm not legit....

Truth in editing: changed an "i" to a "o".

 

Even a weakly struck coin has luster on the highpoints. I think that breaks in the luster is very basic and to the point.

 

Have you ever bought a slabbed coin disagreeing wirh the grade in either direction? If you have added this coin to your collection I'll say it is because you really liked the coin. That will always be the most important for a collector.

 

Ah I see. I think I understand your position better than I previously did. But here's the thing, why does wear matter above all else? Why should a coin be penalized down from 67 to 58 for a slight touch of wear that doesn't appreciably affect the eye appeal when a coin that is wholly unattractive and excessively baggy gets a 60 or 61? I understand wear is the standard, but why? What is the justification outside of the circular argument that wear matters because wear matters?

I don't know what you do with your slabbed coins, but all I do with mine is look at them. That being the case, I fail to see a justification for why anything should matter for grading over eye appeal. A better looking coin should get a better grade, according to the K.I.S.S. principle. I don't see why a common sense scale where better looking coins get better grades has to be messed up by this wear/no wear distinction, especially when people cannot agree on what wear even is near the AU/MS boundary.

I can see for myself whether or not a coin has wear that bothers me, taken in concert with the many other factors that make up eye appeal of which wear is only one. I don't see any value in an artificial deflating of the grade just because someone considered wear to be special. Wear is not special. It is a surface condition just like marks, hairlines, luster, toning, strike, etc. Light surface conditions, regardless of source, should impact the grade commensurate with their severity. Not in some instances a 12 point deduction. It makes zero sense.

 

I think this might be the best way to explain things:

Grades 1-59 are reserved for circulated coins.
A different grading scale of 60-70 is reserved for non-circulated coins.

It might make some feel better to have the non-circulated scale run from 1-11(10), but that would confuse new collectors. The Sheldon scale makes it simple for people starting out to know that an ugly 60 is considered better for pricing than a pretty 45.

Edit: Or maybe it would make more sense viewing the scale from 70 to 0. This would be like gymnastics floor exercise or figure skating. You start with a maximum possible score and deduct from there. If you have a cleaned or damaged coin, that would be like a technical program that missed key elements. They may have put on the best show, but the score would fail to beat someone whose simple program that did everything would get.

 

I don't think you're really addressing my question. It's not a what but a why? Why should I care about wear above other surface impairments. What is it that makes wear deserve the special treatment that penalizes coins above the impact on their eye appeal? Modern market grading thinks it shouldn't, at least to some extent. I don't think market grading goes far enough.

 

Each person has their specific reasoning on coins: physical condition,historical,scarcity, and probably others on determining it's personal monetary value. So any monetary value over that should be questionable for the individual to spend. Ancient coins may be more historical, fewer available, more cuts and bruises, but very often costs less than a TPG graded AU50 1943 Dime. So which one should a person be interested in chasing? Everyone's decision.
It depends on the person. Buying grades can bring less of a coin over time. Graders are human. IMO as each of us are individuals. even if twins. But don't let it spoil your happiness in collecting what you truly like , MS63 or VF. Remember the true value of something or someone lies internal, not on the surface. IMO Jim

 

If you don’t care. That’s your prerogative. It’s not my place to tell you why to collect what you collect.

 

I think the Circulated part of the scale arose when so much of coin collecting was about pulling coins from change to put in albums. They were all circulated - and wear was a good way to say which were more beat up or more pristine.

If, as has been said, the Uncirculated scale is independent, then that is where other concerns can be accounted for. How many dings, dents, scratches, scuffs, discolorations, and so on - all those things that a circulated coin is just assumed to have, and that an uncirculated coin should not (but does, of course).

Too bad there has to be a judgement call about which scale to use for any particular coin. Here’s my example:

• If you take a quick look at the jaw and cheekbone, it looks like a luster break - so there’s wear.
• If you look at the field at the back of Lincoln’s head, there is a silver toning that extends up onto the hair. There are a couple of other spots as well, such as near the UST. So wait, maybe that isn’t wear on the jaw after all..

Which is it, an AU or an MS? The choice could change the grade by several levels, say from AU58 to MS65 - and the value would swing wildly. (From $300 to $1200.)

That is why I would much prefer a single continuous scale without one particular factor (the perception of wear) outweighing all the others.

 

I can't distinguish those two cases from a single, static photo -- at least, not every time. I'm guessing I'd have better luck if I could tilt the coin under a light, and I'm guessing that if you let two or ten professional graders do the same, they'd all agree with each other. From a single photo, though, I'll bet even the pros wouldn't necessarily get it right (i.e. all agree).

 

Here ya go! A single, non-static photo for you!

Joking aside, ICG gave it an MS62. That seems a bit of a cop-out, like splitting the difference between AU and a really nice MS.

I mean, once you have decided it is MS, how do you figure 62? Color and luster are outstanding, and the reverse strike is great, with maybe a little weakness on the front. But, strike isn’t usually considered anyway. Surfaces are terrific.

So this may be a pretty good example of a coin that confounds the grading scale. I agree with starting with “70” and then deducting for all flaws. Wear would just be one category, along with luster, color, and yes, strike, and damage, eye appeal, and so on.

With such an approach we could retain the Sheldon number and keep all the work done grading millions of coins already. But the boundary between AU and MS could be taken off the label for coins where it doesn’t work. How about using “AU/MS” for coins that could fall either way?

 

Yes, I know that's how it was set up, but why should it be that way? Your answer to this question, even in our previous discussions, always employs circular logic: wear is the primary determining factor because coins are graded by using wear and coins are graded by using wear because wear is the primary determining factor.

You could literally replace the word wear in your explanation with the word toning. Imagine then someone matter of factly stating that toning is the primary determining factor for grading because coins are graded by the progression of toning. And realize you actually could grade coins that way, where blast white silver coins were MS and as toning progressed it lowered the grade to AU, XF, VF, etc. It is both arbitrary and problematic that wear is used to make this determination.

 

You hit the nail right on the head here. The grading scale doesn't work in the AU55-MS64 range because light wear is equivalent to a small non-distracting mark in terms of the impact on eye appeal, yet any amount of wear no matter how insignificant relegates the coin to no higher than AU58. In many cases whether or not there is wear significant enough to be penalized is a judgment call.

As an experiment I had a slider peace dollar that I submitted to both PCGS and NGC several times. In hand it looks every bit as nice as a slabbed MS65 I've got, but I've gotten grades back AU55, AU58, MS62, MS63. None of these grades are sufficient to describe the coin. It looks MS65 with just a light touch of non-distracting wear. Calling it an AU55 is nuts to me, because if you compare it to a "real" AU55 it looks like a mechanical error on the label, the difference is so stark. AU58 is technically correct, but it's a meaningless grade since there is such a huge span of quality encompassed by AU58 it really means you have to look at the coin in hand to make a determination. MS62 is a cop out grade, same as you mentioned for the Lincoln. At least MS63 seems like a reasonable attempt at a net grade, though I would have given it a 64. The fact that we have a scale where professional graders cannot agree within 8 points though, readily demonstrates that the scale is broken in this range.

 

Again, start with defining "Wear".

 

The cheekbone looks like wear. Period. The other color changes seem to have texture, but the cheekbone is flat in a way that appears like wear.

As to Charley’s incessant circular argument that refuses to accept wear to mean a break in luster, despite that being the numismatic definition of wear, I don’t know. How does one define wear without referencing luster? How does one define a break in said luster without the aforementioned wear?

I guess we start with the dies. You take the perfect counter-image of an original die. If the flatness is higher than expected, it’s die wear. If the flatness is lower than expected, it’s coin wear. Use whatever definition of wear that you find in a dictionary that relates to damage on a metal.

 

Why do you need to identify MS coins at all? Anything that happens to a coin is damage. Toning is damage, hits are damage, bag marks are damage, wear is damage. It's all the same. One coin with damage from a hit is damaged. Another with damage from toning is damaged. Yet another with damage from friction is damaged. They are the same thing.

Very few coins are actually truly "mint state" as they were when struck. Damage starts as soon as the coin is ejected into the hopper. Same as how toning starts damaging the coin right away. It's all the same thing. The coins you call mint state already have varying types of "acceptable" damage. The hard line between AU and MS does not actually exist once you realize the equivalence of damage. There is just a continuum of severity of damage. Singling out wear as the sole source of damage to move a coin across an artificial boundary in the grading scale is what causes the problems cited time and time again in these discussions - people obsessing over the illusion of having a mint state coin. You don't have mint state coins. You have lightly damaged coins with good eye appeal. You can also have a lightly damaged coin with good eye appeal if some of that damage is wear. It is the same thing.

Realize that wear is essentially just your favorite type of damage. We give coins damaged by wear a grade, but if they are damaged by hits from other coins we call them mint state when they are not, if they are damaged by toning but we like how it looks well that gets a bump up, if they are damaged by other sources still we call that details. It is completely arbitrary. All of these things are just types of damage. Do you see what I'm saying here? Damage is damage. We just like some types of damage better than others because of its impact on eye appeal. But still, damage is damage and this distinction is both subjective and arbitrary.

You justify using wear as being special to identify mint state coins, but they aren't mint state coins! They are equally damaged coins, but you give that damage a pass. You see?

The current grading scale as you go down the scale from MS70, damage to the coin is increasing along with a reduction in eye appeal. Some of this damage can be from hits, toning (particularly unattractive toning), etc. With technical grading, you arbitrarily take all the higher quality coins with eye appeal commensurate to the 60-69 grades with just a small amount of damage that happens to be from wear, and you lump them in AU58. The red triangle represents the spread of quality that are then compressed into the AU58 grade. This renders a grade of AU58 meaningless because the quality and eye appeal have an absolutely enormous possible range. That doesn't work. And it's all because of this artificial AU/MS boundary tacked on to the scale.


Whereas what you really have is a quality continuum from the 50s through 69 where every coin has varying degrees of damage/detractors from different sources where they can simply be graded based on eye appeal commensurate with the level of damage (K.I.S.S. principle). With a purely numeric scale you eliminate all the problems encountered with the Sheldon scale as it stands that led to the creation of market grading.