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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;davidh, post: 2620636, member: 15062&quot;][MEDIA=youtube]cuSk3Mrb1uA[/MEDIA]</p><p><br /></p><p>Graders work on 800 coins a day.&nbsp; Not accounting for break times, that&#039;s 100 per hour or 1 minute, 40 seconds each.&nbsp; I doubt anyone can keep up with that kind of work load, all day long, without making significant errors.&nbsp; Admittedly, they&#039;re only right 80% of the time.&nbsp; The claim that differences between multiple graders will average out over time is nonsense.&nbsp; They&#039;re still going to be 80% accurate overall.&nbsp; The ideal that you can resubmit a coin multiple times until it gets a grade you like is fallicious; what you wind up with is a coin that is overgraded and a future buyer will still grade the coin himself, regardless of what the holder says.</p><p><br /></p><p>Bag marks are OK for some coins, not so for others.&nbsp; Wear can be overlooked on some high points, on some coins, as long as the wear spot is not discolored.&nbsp; Spots and fingerprints matter on some coins, no so much on others.&nbsp; Toning is bad for some coins but can be overlooked on others.&nbsp; The rarer a coin is, the more you can overlook defects that would bodybag another more common coin.&nbsp; Eye appeal (which is a rather vague term) can make or break a coin which is otherwise absolutely identical to another.&nbsp; Cleaning done decades ago can be overlooked but not on more recent coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>The acceptance of grading only matters if you&#039;re in this for future profit.&nbsp; On the other hand, if you&#039;re a collector who only wants to collect nice things, then the only consideration should be how the coin looks in hand.&nbsp; I&#039;ve seen plenty of coins graded 55 or 58 which are far more desirable than some graded 65 or 66, simply because the 50&#039;s are visually better than the 60&#039;s which may have heavy toning and subsequent loss of visual detail.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>In the field of cars, I know of someone with a 1963 Pontiac &quot;Swiss Cheese&quot; Catalina</p><p>that&#039;s worth on the order of $750,000.&nbsp; It looks exactly the same as any other 1963 Pontiac Catalina worth $20,000.&nbsp; The former is parked in a garage and will never be driven on the street; the latter can be driven and enjoyed every day.&nbsp; This is how I see coins.&nbsp; You can go nuts seeking the perfect MS70 coin worth thousands and when you find it you put it in a vault somewhere, only to be seen on special occasions.&nbsp; Or you can be happy with a pretty EF or AU coin that you can keep on a shelf in your living room and enjoy every day.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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