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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;johnmilton, post: 3653210, member: 101855&quot;]If you think I&#039;m conservative, you should meet Bill Noyes, the copper guy. He makes me look like the most liberal grader on the planet. Ditto for many of the other Early American Copper collectors, but Noyes is the toughest.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for the way I grade that has to do with the school of hard knocks from the time that I was a teenage, trying sell some coins I&#039;d bought to dealers to the years when I was a dealer selling many four and five figure coins, including your Morgan dollars. I have spent many hours studying Brown &amp; Dunn, &quot;Photograde,&quot; &quot;The ANA Grading Guide&quot; and tens of thousands of coins over a lifetime.</p><p><br /></p><p>Are the grading standards changing? Sure. The grading services need to find ways to drum up more business. Relaxing the standards encourages collectors to re-submit their old holders for upgrades. I know it&#039;s happening, but I&#039;m not going to become a party to promoting it.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for the upgrades collectors are getting, it&#039;s like a dog chasing its tail. The standards get watered down; people see they are getting poorer coins for the given grade; and the prices come down. That&#039;s why coins like a 1916-D Mercury Dime in VF looks so cheap. When you go out to buy the coin, you find out that what used to be VG is now VF. If you want all of the lines on the ax, you have to buy an EF at a minimum.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s been that way for years. The grading services have long been liberal with grades for circulated key date coins. Now they are going after the Mint State pieces which is one of the reasons why they came into existence. Now the sliders are becoming Mint State pieces and the &quot;mule train&quot; is running up the line.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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