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Message:: [QUOTE="princeofwaldo, post: 1432422, member: 24091"]The bell curve doesn't apply. If it did, then you would never see a coin with a higher population in MS65 than you would in, say, MS62, and clearly that isn't the case with the majority of the coins out there. Very often there are more coins in the higher grades, and sometimes none at all in the circulated grades. And that's because they are not using a bell curve, but rather, they are using their objective judgement as to the coins condition. Were they to grade modern coins the same way using objective judgement, you would, on occassion, see some issues where the population in MS70 is higher than in MS69. The bell curve would only work if you declared one single individual coin as the finest known, --and in fact it was descernibly the finest known-- and all the other coins below it increased in number as their grade decreased. In the real world, this obviously is inapplicable to coins, so there's really no point in bringing the whole "bell curve" thing into the discussion. The only reason I can think of, that woud compel someone to think the bell curve applies, would be if an individual had paid 5 times more for a coin in MS70 than he would have had to pay for an MS69, and the whole "bell curve" idea then becomes little more than a rationalization for such absurd and financially insane behavior.[/QUOTE]