After a thirty-year hiatus, I have decided to get back into collecting, starting by adding to my MS collection of Lincolns. Step one is to familiarize myself with the grading criteria for that series, and since my 1977 edition of ANA Grading Standards appeared a bit dated, I picked up the current edition on Kindle. It does a fairly good job of describing the various MS grades, but I think I need something that goes into more detail, particularly regarding Lincoln Cents. I have been searching through this forum and the Internet looking for a site/book that goes into more detail (ideally with LOTS of photos) but have not found anything. I was wondering if anyone could point me to some resources that would help me learn how to grade MS coins. In perusing CT I saw that GDJMSP recommended Coppercoins.com, but it looks like that site is largely dead with most of the links disabled. Very disappointing since it looked like it was an excellent resource. I plan on joining a local coin club here in Indianapolis, so hopefully I will be able to glean some information from that group as well. Thanks for any help. -Richard
Photograde is useful, but to take it further click the “more images” button within a particular date and type on the PCGS CoinFacts app as it will (usually, unless very rare) give you many more examples to view within each numerical grade compared to just one on photograde. With Lincolns especially there is a ton of strike variation depending on the date, so this will take you much further in analyzing.
WOW! I had gone to the photograde site, but I had not drilled down far enough to see that they had photos of different grades of just about every year. Thanks for pointing that out, it is a great help.
I would go to the PCGS site on-line, “CoinFacts.” There are pictures there of every Lincoln Cent date and mint mark combination and separate sections for “Brown,” “R&B,” and “Red.” You won’t find as much grading information anywhere else, and it’s free.
