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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Leadfoot, post: 323841, member: 2972&quot;]I don&#039;t take your question as argumentative at all.&nbsp; I enjoy these discussions!&nbsp; :thumb:</p><p><br /></p><p>You bring up a good point, and I suspect the one that GDJMSP and I disagree with relative to how much wear is in fact on this coin and how much what you are seeing is light wear on a flat strike.&nbsp; To answer your question, yes a weak strike would result in fewer details, and less luster on those weakly struck areas as well, so even the lightest of friction would make the coin appear more worn than it is.&nbsp; In my opinion, that&#039;s one of the achilles heel in the &quot;details&quot; way of grading (i.e. ANA grading, EAC details sharpness grading), as it doesn&#039;t take into account weak strikes very well.</p><p><br /></p><p>Quite candidly I&#039;ve not studied this series as much as I have others, but I wll tell you this -- any coin with VF details would not have the remaining amount of luster this coin has, or at least I&#039;ve never seen a piece of gold ever graded that way in the past 10 years.&nbsp; It might be the literal interpretation of the ANA grading standard, but it doesn&#039;t apply to grades you will see in the market today.&nbsp; I commend and admire GDJMSP for holding the line on these issues (as gradeflation is a serious concern), but the market just speaks a different language (i.e. grading standard).</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve talked about this before, but I don&#039;t grade the same way that many standards are written.&nbsp; I&#039;m more of a visual thinker, as a result I tend to to judge the luster on a coin as the distinguising factor in low MS to VF grades.&nbsp;&nbsp; I have found this to be the best way to quickly assess just about any coin type and has allowed me to be a fairly good judge of grade without having to memorize every series.&nbsp; Some might argue it is overly simplistic, and they would probably be right, but it works for me.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, back to the question on how you distinguish an MS from an AU and an AU from an XF.&nbsp; <b>To me it is simple, just look at the luster</b>.&nbsp; In a MS coin, you generally won&#039;t have serious imparement of the luster on the fields of most coins (gold included).&nbsp; You may have some &quot;stacking friction&quot; (i.e. light high-point rub), but you won&#039;t have serious imparement of the fields that impair the cartwheel -- the coin will cartwheel like it is supposed to.&nbsp; On an AU coin, there&#039;s some imparement, some slight rub, in the fields and on the high points of the coin, not just limited to the highest details, but also some of the areas of lower relief.&nbsp; On an XF coin, this process continues, to my eye it means 50% or less of the mint luster remaining, mostly in the protected areas of around the devices and inside them.&nbsp; Fields will show serious luster imparement and devices will begin to be worn down as a result of wear.&nbsp; And so on, until at Fine, the coin has practically no mint luster left.</p><p><br /></p><p>On this coin, there is clear high point wear, and some imparement of the luster in the open areas of the fields.&nbsp; The coin doesn&#039;t cartwheel in these areas like a true mint-state coin would, and it more closely resembles my vision of an XF 45 to AU 55 coin with respect to this feature, which is the primary reason I disagreed with the grade.&nbsp; However, I would submit that market grading &quot;ranks&quot; and &quot;prices&quot; coins rather than grades them, and in my opinion, this coin deserves to be bumped up to a level above those coins that have the same amount of detail because of the look and eye appeal, so therefore I understand and am comfortable paying the price on this coin, but that doesn&#039;t change my mind about how I grade the coin, just how to value it -- and there&#039;s a difference.</p><p><br /></p><p>But that&#039;s just the way I do it, and your mileage may vary, but I submit that it is also a pretty good predictor of the way that NGC and PCGS do it too.&nbsp; But please take a look at the Heritage Auction Archives or auction catalogs and decide for yourself.</p><p><br /></p><p>I would be very interested in your and other&#039;s opinons on this topic.</p><p><br /></p><p>Respectfully submitted as my opinion only...Mike[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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