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Message:: [QUOTE="Jaelus, post: 23905055, member: 46237"]You hit the nail right on the head here. The grading scale doesn't work in the AU55-MS64 range because light wear is equivalent to a small non-distracting mark in terms of the impact on eye appeal, yet any amount of wear no matter how insignificant relegates the coin to no higher than AU58. In many cases whether or not there is wear significant enough to be penalized is a judgment call. As an experiment I had a slider peace dollar that I submitted to both PCGS and NGC several times. In hand it looks every bit as nice as a slabbed MS65 I've got, but I've gotten grades back AU55, AU58, MS62, MS63. None of these grades are sufficient to describe the coin. It looks MS65 with just a light touch of non-distracting wear. Calling it an AU55 is nuts to me, because if you compare it to a "real" AU55 it looks like a mechanical error on the label, the difference is so stark. AU58 is technically correct, but it's a meaningless grade since there is such a huge span of quality encompassed by AU58 it really means you have to look at the coin in hand to make a determination. MS62 is a cop out grade, same as you mentioned for the Lincoln. At least MS63 seems like a reasonable attempt at a net grade, though I would have given it a 64. The fact that we have a scale where professional graders cannot agree within 8 points though, readily demonstrates that the scale is broken in this range.[/QUOTE]