Thoughts on cabinet friction from a professional grader.

Wear is not damage. Damage is not wear.
Old coins, and especially Morgans, had "bag marks" from beating each other up.
I have often seen beat up Morgans in a TPG capsule with a high grade.
MS 60 and MS 70 are both MS.
I have also heard many times how collectors moan that they have to see the coin, because two coins of the same grade can look entirely different.
Damage doesnt count as wear

 

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People say this as if wear is magical and special, but it isn't really. It's obvious that wear damages the surfaces of the coin.

Wear is simply the most well understood form of surface damage, and the damage from wear is not considered to be a problem when grading. As wear tends to occur in the same way on a type it can be described and documented and used to grade coins objectively (as much as is possible). When we grade a coin in the circulated range, we are describing the level of damage from wear. Other forms of damage are random and affect grading subjectively. That's the only difference.

If Kurt was still here he would say that toning is a type of damage as well, and look how many coins get a bump for eye appeal from attractive toning.

 

green18, posted: "Thanks to Doug, I can now 'get you' with a smart bomb........"

What is a "Smart Bomb used for?" I'm definitely NOT SMART so where can I get one?

Jaelus, posted: "I think you're missing my point, which admittedly is largely a thought exercise, but follow what I'm saying here:

Take a coin that leaves the mint as MS70. For this particular coin, MS70 is mint state. The coin then enters circulation and acquires hits and hairlines, reducing the coin to MS63, however, the coin has acquired no wear. My point is, this coin has to be by definition not mint state. It is not in the state it left the mint! It is circulated, and has acquired detrimental surface conditions from circulation resulting in a poorer state of preservation. Yet we call this coin both uncirculated and mint state, neither of which are true, which is why both terms are meaningless unless you're talking about a sealed mint product."

I understood exactly what you wrote. That's why I wrote to correct you and TRY to get you thinking like the rest of the 99.8% of numismatists in the world."

Coin grading is a simple operation, very easy to understand and apply as long as eye appeal and value ARE NOT CONSIDERED in the beginning as you learn/are taught the basics ("true" technical grading). The rest (commercial grading as practiced by the TPGS and dealers) comes later.

This is all explained in Penny Whimsy. READ IT!

MINT STATE: Free from any trace of WEAR!

We can all write silly things as: "As soon as the Proof coin is taken off the die and gets hairlined in the tray (ready to be put into a set) IT IS NO LONGER MS..."

The fact is, I can take that coin from the press and drill a hole through it and it will still be graded "technically" as MS, with a hole! I can also take that coin and spend it and if I see it months later and cannot find any trace of luster loss on its high points or field - it has miraculously remained in MS condition!

MS-60 is similar, beat up yet showing no friction wear. Unfortunately, grading terms and standards have "evolved." Johnny-come-lately "numismatists" coupled with several old and powerful dealers are responsible for this evolution. That's one reason we are having this discussion. Unfortunately, I don't think any opinions will be changed.

 

My way of thinking is rather in line with ancients collectors and quite a significant number of collectors who don't give a hoot about third party grading. I don't know what the actual percentage is, but I can assure you it is much greater than 0.2%.

Continuing a broken system simply because it's the way things have been done in the past is not an acceptable justification. I'm trying to get people thinking here. Do I believe that coins are no longer MS as soon as they leave the mint, no. My belief is rather the opposite, that coins should be graded in the 60s that have wear; not in order to designate these coins MS, but rather to decouple the concept that 60-69 grades are exclusively for mint state coins. The TPGs have already been doing this with MS60-62 coins quite liberally, but it is not the grade that is improper - it is the MS prefix.

First, you have to ask yourself what the point of the grading scale is. Is it for the sake of assigning a number that is "technically correct" but has no practical value? No. Grading a collectible has a very real purpose, and that purpose is singular - to identify quality of the collectible for the purpose of valuation. To that end, an increase in grade must be directly coupled to an increase in value, or else the scale is not working.

In serving the purpose of a collectible grading scale, it is obvious that the Sheldon scale is completely and utterly broken at the AU/MS boundary, and something should be done about it. Take a look at this chart. I have plotted technical grade on the horizontal axis, and coin quality on the vertical axis. The blue line (max quality) represents the top quality coins for the grade, and the orange line (min quality) represents the bottom quality coins for the grade.



The scale breaks down sharply at the AU/MS boundary, since coins with negligible wear but exceptional quality are artificially held back by the AU58 ceiling, and on the other side, coins of exceptionally poor quality are artificially propped up by the MS60 floor.

The best way to fix this is by changing the names of the AU and MS designations to something tied to quality instead of state, so that mint state coins may range below 60 and coins with wear may range above 58.

 

How about A term like Market Grade (MG)...MG04....MG70...MG58...MG62..

 

Mint state runs from MS 60 to MS 70. So the dings and scratches and bag marks are accounted for.
The other 59 grades are based on wear.

 

How about just drop the letters which cause a lot of the confusion and go 1-70 on a continuous scale

Fortunately that hard line and belief has been and is eroding but it will take time. While many love the change it is also one of the biggest sources of complainants from the elders so the change can't be overnight but it is and will almost certainly continue to happen as it should

 

Not to make it more complicated but how about 2 grades ... a technical grade AND a market grade... AU 58-MG 63...MS 65-MG67+

Edit: that way we have the technical grade for the old guard and the market grade which can take account of luster, toning, etc. for the others!

 

Why?

Technical grades are subjective as well.

There's no point including a grade almost no one would care about.

 

Which one? No one cares about market grades? Isnt that what All TPGs now grade?

 

Nothing will ever change if you just write off technical grading as something no one cares about, you only alienate a large percentage of collectors. Try thinking outside the box.

 

No very few people care about a "purely technical" grade which is a fallacy anyway as the "technical" aspects are subjective as well. Some collecting elders want it to be like back in the day, the market does not and it's easy to see the direction that will continue to happen fixing the old broken system.

A misunderstanding of market grading is the biggest issue from people upset. Technical aspects are still taken into account, coins are still graded, grading has evolved. Incorrect information has given people a warped view of what it really is as the people who believed it were loud and insistent and people started to buy it. Truth be told there's very likely more misinformation about TPG grading on the internet than real information

Eye appeal wins the overwhelming majority of times. People who are like I'd rather have this ugly dog with few marks over the gorgeous coin with a couple hits are few and far between and the market proves this consistently.

The "technical grading" crowd and old school way is disproportionately represented on the forum compared to the market

 

Why not a grading system that is based on eye appeal - EA1 - EA70? That's pretty much how I buy coins.....

 

Let’s get rid of the numbers altogether so there is much less to disagree about.

 

And isn’t this exactly what eBay has done for ungraded coins? As a result I just buy what I like.

Or try to, anyway.

But the pictures usually suck.

Maybe if there was a number to go along with the picture.

Oh darn, I just invented grading again.

 

1-70 is here to stay. The letters could be phased out and just have something denoting business/proof/special as XF adds nothing to the 40/45.

The current system can continue to evolve and adapt to fix old flaws, but anything that turns it on it's head or completely changes it is already DOA

 

Can you imagine the heart attacks you caused by suggesting getting rid of the numbers? But I have hundreds of thousands of dollars in my registry sets that I need numbers to show that my set numbers add up to more than your set's number and is therefore superior...hrumph hrumph

 

This thread is going to have essentially 0 impact on the future of grading.

The demeaning registry stuff is a great example of misinformed internet talk

 

Poking a little fun, yes. Demeaning, no.

 

Here’s one I bought raw on eBay. Graded VF-20.




Or you could buy this cleaned, scratched PCGS VF-25 for 5 times as much!



The pictures on eBay are easy enough to read, even without numbers.