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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 1073008, member: 112&quot;]I can only suppose you are asking about the most recent time when I think they loosened their standards. But exactly ? No, because it wasn&#039;t a change that took place like flipping a switch. It also takes a bit of time for the change to become noticeable to us on the outside (meaning outside the TPG itself) because we don&#039;t get to see every coin they grade as soon as they grade them. And it takes a while for the coins graded under new standards to make their way into the public eye. And the TPGs are certainly not going to advertise the fact that they just loosened their standards. So any changes can only be noticed after the fact.</p><p><br /></p><p>That said, I believe the most radical change in TPG grading standards took place about 2007. But you can go back long before that and find examples where truly educated and knowledgeable numismatists, some the very pillars of our community, were writing in coin mags, rcc, and internet mail lists that all predated coin forums and find examples of coins that were seemingly upgraded and drastically so for no reason whatsoever. The very term grade-flation first began appearing in print in the late &#039;90s as I recall. </p><p><br /></p><p>But those early changes (loosening) in grading standards were less noticeable and seemed to occur very slowly, so slowly that most folks didn&#039;t even notice them. That of course can at least be partially accounted for because most folks, or far fewer than today, knew how to accurately grade coins for themselves. It could even be argued that prior to 2007 (my estimate) that loosening of the TPG grading standards was only applied to coins of a certain rarity or value. And of course since those coins would be the most noticeable due to that rarity - they were noticed because people remembered them and the previous grades assigned to them. It was proveable because they were written about, photographed and remembered.</p><p><br /></p><p>But around 2007 it seemed like the TPGs threw their established grading standards out the window and began assigning grades that the coins had not seen since 1986 when every MS coin there is was dropped 2 grades and most circ coins dropped 1 grade if not 2.</p><p><br /></p><p>Does that answer your question ?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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