Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;WingedLiberty, post: 2012290, member: 26030&quot;]So a few years back CAC thought this was in the upper portion of the MS65 grade.&nbsp; Today they think it&#039;s in the lower portion of the MS64 grade or lower.&nbsp; I think this just goes to show how arbitrary the single point grading system is.&nbsp; Can any of us really tell an MS64 from an MS65 from an MS66 -- and what is that difference exactly?</p><p><br /></p><p>Take the same coin and submit it 20 times to PCGS and I&#039;ll bet you&#039;ll get a big spread of grades perhaps spreading over 2 or 3 points ... and might even go from Genuine (Problem) to Gradeable.&nbsp; It&#039;s just too imprecise a system. </p><p><br /></p><p>Even if you look at the PCGS grading chart -- the words they use to differentiate grades are so nebulous and imprecise that I am surprised there is not more of a spread of grades. Just look at the words they use to separate MS64 from MS65 from MS66 ... &quot;Few Marks&quot;, &quot;Minor Marks&quot;, &quot;Few Minor Marks&quot;.&nbsp; So how many is few?&nbsp; Is that 3?&nbsp; 5?&nbsp; 7?&nbsp; And what is the precise difference between a small mark and a minor mark?&nbsp; Idunno.&nbsp; I don&#039;t think PCGS or NGC does either. </p><p><br /></p><p>This also shows how the grade one gets on a coin is so dependent on which grading team you get (or luck into).&nbsp; One grading team might be very lax on color and pass everything as NT.&nbsp; Another grading team might hate color and call anything not white, Genuine: Questionable Color.&nbsp;&nbsp; One team might look at your coin and think 66 ... another team might look at it and say 64 at best. </p><p><br /></p><p>I also think that since most people might resubmit coins that they think are undergraded and not ones that are overgraded -- many slabbed coins might be &quot;optimized&quot; to show the highest grade possible to get (and might only have been achieved after a few submissions).&nbsp;&nbsp; So there might be a bias for slabbed coins to be slightly overgraded in general.</p><p><br /></p><p>Honestly I think grading was better in the 1960&#039;s when there were fewer categories: Unc, Choice, Gem.&nbsp; I think the current system of cutting UNCs into a 10 point scale from 60 to 70 (even more if you factor in + or star) is just too fine a scale and makes people mistakenly believe that the grading companies can nail down grades so precisely with any consistency or accuracy. </p><p><br /></p><p>IMO, what they should do is have fewer categories ... (of course that would never happen in reality) ... only then would there be more of a consistent result of grades on any given coin.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://mindstar.com/cointalk_photos/PCGS_Grading.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in