Hello, all! I’ve just returned from my third year in Colorado Springs for the annual ANA Summer Seminar where I took Intermediate Coin Grading. I had a complete blast, and a full write up on my week away at Coin Camp will be up soon. Last year, I shared my notes from the class and received such an overwhelmingly positive response I knew I had to do it again this year. I took the same course as I did last year despite doing well the first time around because I wanted to be sure to have an incredibly strong foundation before moving on to the next level — and the fact that the three instructors, David McCarthy of Kagin’s, John Schuch Jr. of NGC, and Steve Feltner of Americana Rare Coins, are some of my best friends in coin-nerd-land had absolutely nothing to do with my decision. I brought my trusty iPad along with me, and took down nearly everything the three instructors said whether it was new information to me or not, in bullet-point form. Some of the points may lack some context, but there are some real gems of information to be found in these notes and it’s my hope that they may help another fellow coin nerd out. Enjoy! Summer Seminar Class Notes
great notes. I miss Steve. let him know I tried to contact him. no answer. my e-mail edited - for your own safety, pass it along privately thanks, Craig.
Thanks Amanda , guess this old dog can learn some new tricks . I'll have to take some classes . The counterfeit and the advanced grading where they would talk about altered surfaces are on my want list .
Your notes were an interesting read, thanks. It was nice to see this bit: For coins where an understanding of strike is needed, two of the teachers think that NGC grades coins better (like the early bust halves and earlier coins) But I wish it had been unanimous because I couldn't agree more with this statement.
Haha, I work in the military, we don't exactly have the ability to go and do it as we please. Maybe if I get stationed in Colorado it will be easier. And definitely colder.
What Doug said. But the TPGs do attempt to distinguish between them and they do so successfully (meaning that the market agrees with the assessment) despite it being inherently subjective. Much in the same way that knowledge of the storage conditions of Morgan dollars informs one's decision regarding the originality of toning where identical toning on a Peace Dollar would not be considered original, one can make an educated guess regarding stacking friction versus wear without definitively knowing the source of the friction. One makes an educated guess based on how a typical coin of that series/type was handled/stored, the overall look of the coin, and the look of the metal/luster on the areas with friction. The question is whether or not you accept the premise that coins can have friction wear and still be considered mint state.
It's not an educated guess at all, but rather just a policy decision made by the TPGs. In other words, they dictate to their graders that if a coin only has light wear on the high points, then it is automatically designated to be what they refer to as roll, album, coin, etc. etc., friction, and not actual wear. The PCGS grading book states this flat out, in writing. But wear is wear, there are no distinctions between different types of wear, none at all. All wear, regardless of cause or how it happened, begins as breaks in the the luster. And it doesn't matter if that wear occurred while the coin was in paper roll, or while the coin was in a cash register drawer or somebody's pocket. It's all still the same, and it shows up as breaks in the luster. The proof of the idiocy of this TPG policy is blatant, but it is ignored. All you need to do is think for a minute people. Paper coin rolls were hardly ever used, by anybody until the 1930's. And they were not even invented until the late 1890's. So of all the coins minted prior to the 1930's, how many of them could have even remained in true MS condition until the 1930's ? And of those few how many could have ever seen the inside of a paper roll after the 1930's to get this so called "roll friction" on them ? The TPGs dictate this ridiculous policy for one reason, it's so they can grade AU coins as MS and make their customers happy.
If it is rare and valuable (or from a major big name collection) it's stacking friction, if not it's wear.
