How does one grade such things when there aren't many others to compare with? Aren't grades pretty much relative to others within the series?
These have popped up over the years, but I've never known much about them. Pretty interesting. As far as grading, it is merely a judgment call on the quality of manufacture and the state of preservation. It's not really necessary for them to have graded similar coins in the past to arrive at a grade consensus.
As 17 were graded, I would imagine it wasn't difficult for the graders to compare them with each other and assign grades once some sort of guidance was established. I'd have been pretty nervous trying to snap them into the prongs in the holder.
... or did the holder prongs just widen sua sponte, Moses standing by the Red Sea-like, and then resume the normal configuration?
When you read the article, it at least SUGGESTS these are the same thing as the previously "unique" one. They're all patterns, and they were all made by Blue Ridge Glass. Such is the inherent risk of buying "unique". Only Known is not the same as Only One.
Putting them all in the same auction seems like a mistake too as well as sending them in all at once generating that article and attention
It mentions the great Roger Burdette and his new book coming out! (Rubs hands together slowly while thinking about tagging Dan Carr and V. Kurt Bellman).
Curious timing on Burdette's sale of his glass cent several months ago (when only two were generally known to exist).
I thought the same thing as I was reading this. Didn't it fetch about $40k? I bet the bottom drops out of the market.