Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 1513939, member: 112&quot;]You don&#039;t buy the books for the photos, forget the photos. Trying to learn to grade based on pictures is about the worst thing you could do ! Pictures in grading books are about as worthless as $3 bills.</p><p><br /></p><p>Pick a coin, any coin. Go to Heritage and look at 10 of them, all same date and mint, all same grade by the same TPG. Every single one of those coins is going to look different. Now think about that for a minute. </p><p><br /></p><p>If all 10 of those coins look different - what good is 1 picture in a grading book going to do you ?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>And that is the key. THAT is why you need the book. You need that written text, those explanations. Can you imagine how big the book would have to be if they had a picture to show an example of everything described in the written text ? Let&#039;s put it this way - you couldn&#039;t pick it up. But your mind can absorb all of that information contained in the written text. And then when you look at coins, in hand not pictures, that information springs to the front and you relate it to what your eyes are seeing.</p><p><br /></p><p>The written text in grading books provides the road map if you will, the guidelines that you have to follow to get from here to there. And just like it is when driving down a road for the first time that you know you are going to drive in a lot in the future, you&#039;d be lost without that road map. The written text gives you the entire road map. If instead you had a picture, what could you see ? You&#039;d see a photo of what, maybe a hundred yard length of the road. Would that do you any good if you had to get from one end to the other and the road was 100 miles long ?</p><p><br /></p><p>Go buy the map. Then when you drive down the road you&#039;ll know where you are going <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie2" alt=";)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s not that simple because there is no single sentence or passage that explains it. You&#039;re trying to focus on a single picture and you can&#039;t do that, you have to look at the whole map.</p><p><br /></p><p>Examples - there can be no spots on 68, 69, &amp; 70.</p><p><br /></p><p>67 - Minute spotting, if present, should be virtually unnoticeable.</p><p>66 - Very minor spotting may be present, although it should be noticed only on close examination.</p><p>65 - <b>Note: There can be a little minor spotting for copper coins. </b>(their bold, not mine)</p><p>64 - There may be noticeable spotting for this grade, although heavy or large spotting would reduce the grade to MS63 or below.</p><p>63 - There can be noticeable spotting, including several large spots or a group of small ones.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sounds kind of vague doesn&#039;t it. How do you define minute, minor, noticeable, large, small ? You don&#039;t know and they don&#039;t tell you. It&#039;s just like with a road map, yeah the main road is marked, even the secondary roads are marked. But all those dirt roads don&#039;t show on the map at all. You have to drive down the road to even see them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Same thing with coins. You have to look at coins, in hand, hundreds of thousands of coins. And that&#039;s for each and every series.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the town where you live do you know your way around ? How did you learn your way around ? You did it by driving down the roads yourself, many times. And that&#039;s just your town. Now what about 2 states over ? Drive over there, without a map, and you&#039;re lost.</p><p><br /></p><p>Well, the grading books are your maps. They allow you get where you are going. But it will take some effort along the way. You have to actually drive the roads. You have to actually look at the coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>Spots, any spots, not just carbon spots, are just 1 right or left turn on the map. Sure they play a part in getting you where you are going. But they are still just 1 turn on map that has thousands of turns <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie2" alt=";)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Buy the books ![/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