If I am thinking about buying a coin, asking for grade opinions make sense. But, the threads that say, I bought it, what do you think the grade is?, seem backwards. If I am not confident of the grade and whether the price is fair, I am not buying yet. If you bought it, wouldn't it be better to state the grade you think it is and ask if others agree?
In my opinion, I like answering GTG threads to better my grading skills. When I post a GTG, I'm doing it for fun, not to see if they agree with the coin.
While nothing beats inspecting a coin in hand, GTG’s are a fun and often educational way to analyze coins from images (which most of us buy from at least part of the time.) We discuss visible issues, the effect of eye appeal on grade, strike characteristics, thresholds of problems before a details grade... and so on.
Oh I agree with the education value. What I question is someone buying a coin without a good idea of the grade and issues. On another coin forum, a guy regularly posts gtg on coins he bought that have lots of problems. He could avoid problem coins but chooses to continue spending on problem coins.
Newbies ask a lot of these type questions. It should be before you buy the coin. It's important that we all learn to grade coins in the series we collect.
GTG threads are just for fun or show and tell of new pickups the vast majority of the time, well sometimes they're used to bash TPGs of course. No matter how good the images are coins can't be properly graded from them and normally images for GTG threads aren't close to perfect images so it becomes even less accurate. Posting for an opinion before a purchase isn't the worst thing to do but even better is to hone in your own skills and save GTG threads for fun/sharing a new pickup.
