Best "guide" for grading coins

With "gradeflation" being mentioned in article by Q David Bowers I wonder what is the best grading guide book to grade one's own coins in the current environment. Many of my coins I graded many years ago and was very conservative in grading.Going to local coin shows have shown a wide variance in the grading of their coins,so I am asking for some guidance. Thanks-All comments and suggestions are appreciated.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Experience. You use these other guides to learn but nothing beats your own experience.

 

Are you looking for a grade-by-grade breakdown with pictures? The ANA's grading Guide is the "standard," and QDB's "Grading Coins by Photographs" is also excellent.

If you are looking for a systematic approach to grading, with a discussion of what each term means, and an explanation of how to evaluate things (what is good luster? How do I know what a strong or weak strike looks like? What causes toning, and how should I evaluate it?), that sort of discussion can be found in a book I wrote recently, edited

 

The previous posters have some great suggestions, but I'd also add the official ANA book to the list. It's not going to line up exactly with PCGS or NGC standards, but it's a good starting point for learning to grade. After that, go to a ton of coin shows and look at a lot of coins, particularly PCGS or NGC coins. Eventually, as it has for me, it will sink in.

 

ANA guide is my Bible........

 

My turn, my turn. Experience looking at coins already graded and hands -on instruction work best; however, you asked about books.

IMO, The ANA grading guide is no longer a good grading guide as the "gradeflation" you mentioned has made the photographs virtually obsolete. However, get a copy of the latest edition and read the very informative introduction. There is also a chart in the dollar section that breaks down many of the factors used to grade coins. This chart is used by me/has been tested in classrooms and it works!

Grading Coins by Photographs is the BEST guide there is right now. Buy it, use the photos, and READ the introduction several times. The PCGS grading guide gives some more useful info about how coins are graded.

Get a copy of the NCI Grading guide. Pay no attention to Chapter 8 and use the book to learn about high points and focal points. Making the Grade is a similar treatment. I have not read the Art and Science of Grading yet.

Join the ANA and borrow the coin grading tape by JP Martin or take the Grading Correspondence Course.

Have fun, go slow, get/read the books, and only by slabbed coins for now.

 

'Gradeflation' is fantasy.........ANA guide is reality.

 

http://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/2016/02/examining-inflation-of-grading-q-david-bowers.html

 

Green, I thought you were .... well, I will not go there I think you are trying to get me to add lots of faces here. It won't work.

Now, if you (or anyone on CT) have a copy of the Bowers book and the ANA book, pick just about any coin type and compare the photos grade for grade. If I remember, most of the changes are in the VF-XF area. Grading has become less strict by far!

I have five grading guides at my desk (6 if we include the one for Canadian coins); yet the Bowers book and the PCGS website are where I look for "liners."
From what I've seen, no one except Summer Seminar students and Old Timers use the ANA Guide.

 

I subscribe to stricter standards........never make any money (I know) but I can wake up in the morning, look in the bathroom mirror, and say.......I like the look of this guy.

 

Remember Tony Randall? Odd Couple? TV series? Never assume.......

 

I have had all the books posted above...love them all. However, I love the convenience of the PCGS Photograde App. I use it all the time when I don't have my books with me.

 

...and then, as I may do on occasion, you can disagree with the accepted market standards and most others in the business, including the TPGS. Perhaps the satisfied little fellow in the mirror is just bucking the tide.

 

The ANA Guide form technical details, Jason Poe's The Art and Science of Grading Coins for the big picture. I have both on the shelf.

 

If you mean that the ANA guide takes gradeflation into account by reducing standards as time goes on, then yes.

Looking at the 6th edition, for example, we read on p. 14, "...certain coins that might have been graded as VG-8, such as an Indian head cent with not all of the letters visible in LIBERTY, can be graded Fine-12. Lest a reader get the wrong idea, this book reports the grading being used in the marketplace. It does not create it". In other words, there are no established "standards", despite the book's title.

Regarding a VF-30 1916-D Mercury dime in the "Grading and the Marketplace" section, the same edition of the ANA guide notes, "Grading interpretations have changed over the years, and decades ago this would have been assigned a lower grade".

The most useful grading tools are smoke and mirrors.

 

Thanks for this...Guess I better read the intro to the newer edition. Looks like they have caught up to what's going on in the "real world" and added these qualifiers about the changes taking place. Unfortunately, the photo's in the book do not reflect what they have written! The photos are decades old when grading was stricter.

 

Personally, I like to stick with "I like it" or "I don't like it". It'll make sense to me and others may not agree, but I'll get the coin if its condition meets my minimum standard (usually around AU-55, problem-free). And, I actually prefer some tarnish throughout, nice patterned color, etc., and dislike some toning that's distracting in unappealing ways, which numeric grades don't really encompass too well.

That said, the grading "guides" I've been using have been photo examples by PCGS or NGC of coins at XX grade. They're mostly photos from HA's site that are linked from those TPGs's sites. It's not a hard grade that I'm assigning to the raw coins I'm looking at, but those TPG coin photos are more-or-less consistent and should theoretically correct for grade inflation (right?), since I'm referencing a coin with an immutable grade (assuming of course it's not cracked out and regraded, damaged slab affecting the coin, problems developing on the coin after slabbing, etc.).

 

Not what I wrote. The ANA guide TALKS about gradeflation YET most of the photos used in the book do not reflect what they say is happening to coin grading in the market. They have not REDUCED the standards at all. The photos are of the OLD STANDARD when grading was strict.

 

That is what experienced collectors all do. Grading is a personal thing. I could NEVER be a TPG at ANY service if I were to use MY STANDARDS

 

It is the words below the photos which establish minimum requirements for a particular grade. The photos (mostly of poor quality) are merely illustrations.