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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 1895378, member: 112&quot;]What there is is found in the beginning of the book. But you&#039;re right there isn&#039;t much. To understand most of it you have to read between the lines and or take grading classes. Like with grading, you learn these things by experience, not just from a book.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>As I plainly said before, it is a subjective thing, there are no set rules, sizes and depths. Just being able to see the marks in hand does not mean they are severe. I can see almost any mark on a coin with my naked eye if I turn it just right under a light. That&#039;s why magnification should not ever be used when grading coins. Or almost never.</p><p><br /></p><p>Instead the books tell you that the size of the coin matters, in other words a mark of a given size on a dime may matter a lot because a dime is small. But a mark of the exact same kind and of the exact same degree of severity on a silver dollar or double eagle, hardly matters at all because the coin is so much larger. To know what is and what is not you have to get a feel for it, to know what is acceptable and what is not, and you can only do that with experience. Nobody can teach you. They can show you, but just like with grading until you look at many, many, thousands of coins you simply won&#039;t know what is and what isn&#039;t. It&#039;s no different than any job really, or any field of study. Experience is a prerequisite before you can be good at it - no matter how much schooling you have.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The books tell you where primary and secondary focal points are. But you&#039;re not going to find all of them for every coin in just one single book. There is no single book that has them all. Some can be found in the ANA book, some can be found in Jim Halperin&#039;s book on grading, and some can only be found books that specialize on a specific series. Again, it&#039;s another one of those things that you learn by experience, but it takes a LOT of experience.</p><p><br /></p><p>And where you think a focal point is, may not be one at all. Of course depending on what book you refer to - they are not all the same. For example, on Morgan dollars, did you know there 5 different focal areas ? Very few know that. ANA book doesn&#039;t tell you that, they only list 2. Some other coins have as many, others don&#039;t. Can you tell me, off the top of your head, according to Jim Halperin where is the primary focal point on the reverse of a Morgan ? Without looking it up I&#039;d almost bet there aren&#039;t 5 people on this forum who can answer that correctly.</p><p><br /></p><p>And for those who don&#039;t know, Jim Halperin is considered by his peers to be one of the very best graders there is.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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