How Good is CoinTalk at Grading?

Without the poll, the lurkers have no outlet for their input. The people who respond in comments are usually forum regulars who are not shy about giving their opinion. The poll gives you both their opinion and that of pthe people who don’t like to opine, for whatever reason.

In addition, the poll allows the reader to guess the grade without scrolling through the entire thread. Without the poll, opinions posted by more experienced members will absolutely influence the opinion of the less experienced collectors.

 

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Quick update, after completing the 15th Official GTG:

CT is averaging 0.67 below the TPG grade. For some reason, people are grading very conservatively (and in many cases, quite harshly). Part of this may be that I'm using Heritage images, which are known to show luster poorly. Part of this may be, in my experience, CT tends to be a bit conservative on GTGs.

I wonder how CT would do with an in-hand GTG? Pondering.... pondering.... more to follow?

 

I think part of it is the mentality that it is better to be under than over, so their guesses are stricter when guessing, especially when there are major value changes.

I have been keeping a record of my guesses in the experiment. I have 5 under vs 8 correct vs 2 over. Of the 5 under, 3 were due to stricter standards, and 2 were because I erred on the side of caution for borderline coins. The 2 over were due to guessing from a phone, which I no longer do. All are +/- 1 point.

I wonder how many of us tend to err on the side of caution, have harsher standards, or guess from phones. Knowing that would go a long way to help explain/normalize the results.

Ooo. A logistical nightmare. Try to get as many CTers at a coin show as possible?

 

Perhaps harsher grading comes from the: "would I buy this for my collection?" syndrome. I'm going to be a lot harder on a coin than a neutral party.

I do the same when I'm at an antique store looking at furniture - a scratch or a blemish that my wife doesn't mind is a deal killer for me; but I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

 

I’d love to see data on 15 from Heritage, 15 from GreatCollections and 15 TrueViews.

 

I think in general, people don't want to be seen as overgrading stuff, so they will tend to err on the side of caution when grading "in public." Being seen as undergrading is excused and/or heralded with bluster about loosening grading standards.

 

I think those are valid questions, Doug. I think I entered this with a certain set of assumptions (as evidenced in the first post). As I gather more data, maybe those assumptions are true? Maybe they're false? Too early to tell!