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Message:: [QUOTE="Jaelus, post: 2298254, member: 46237"]As you say, wear is wear since it's all about condition and the source of the wear is irrelevant. Ok so carrying this out further, why does it matter what caused the reduction in the state of preservation? Why is wear singled out over say, a bag mark? Both are essentially damage to the coin that reduces the state of preservation. But we do arbitrarily differentiate between these, we have to, due to the limitation of the Sheldon scale itself, since it is essentially two grading scales; one for circulated (1-58) and one for uncirculated (60-70). If we got rid of the range descriptions for "almost uncirculated" and "uncirculated" and simply had a continuum from 1-70 where the coins were graded based on their state of preservation, we wouldn't have these issues where certain types of wear have to be called cabinet friction etc.. After all, an AU58 that is really an MS64 with just a slight touch of wear is in a better state of preservation than a baggy MS62, yet the grade is lower. That simply doesn't work, and market grading is an acknowledgement of this.[/QUOTE]