Interesting thread about a PCGS reholder sub that downgraded

So you are arguing a circulated coin should be graded higher than AU58 if it’s “really nice”?

I’d say the price guides are wrong, an AU58 should be worth about the same as a - let’s say MS63 (?) - while low end UNC coins should be valued slightly less. I’ve seen a Bust half dollar graded AU58+ recently, which implies that it’s a premium coin (with minimal wear though). I’d certainly pay more for it than for an average MS61/62.

 

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I have never understood this side of the argument, What I have understood lately is that AU has turned into the new 65. What the TPG's are saying is that the good coins have already left the building, and that they have gotten so out of control that they can't even tell the difference between an altered coin and a Mint State example.

 

I'm saying if you think the faintest wisp of wear magically reduces a 70 with dripping luster and eye appeal to spare down to a 58 - a staggering reduction of 11 grades, but the same coin that has been bag marked to death with zero eye appeal left is somehow a 61, then you've completely lost sight of the intent of coin grading. One of these coins has a major problem that reduces its quality (the baggy coin), and the other hardly has a problem at all and retains its eye appeal and quality.

A singular focus on penalizing wear for the sake of penalizing wear is ignoring the fact that this is about assigning a number to represent the quality of a coin for purposes if valuation. In my above example, the focus on wear gets you the wrong result - the coin with higher quality and value ends up having the lower grade. That alone should tell you the approach of focusing on wear does not always work, and this is why we now market grade, and technical grading is obsolete.

 

As Baseball loves pointing out, the spirit and standards of grading have evolved. Who are we to decide what the TPGs decide what is kosher for the market?

 

WRONG! We are the ones who are supposed to blindly accept whatever they do because we no longer have to learn how to grade and thus will never notice!

 

Clearly, technical grading better describes the level of actual wear, but when it is at the expense of providing a meaningful grade as a collectible, that is of dubious value.

Is there any actual benefit to technical grading?

If you look at any other collectible market and tell someone well this piece grades a 58 and this other one grades a 64, but the 58 is the more desirable and valuable piece, they will rightly look at you like you have two heads.

 

The only solution that gets the best of both worlds is to set 58 as the point where wear appears in the fields, and have AU-6x for coins with high point wear and nothing else.

 

I agree. What we do now doesn't make much sense. If AU is always 50-58 exclusively, then there is no benefit to saying AU55 over just saying 55 without the prefix. AU vs MS on its own already describes whether a coin has wear or not. Decouple them and let the numeric grade do what it should be doing, to describe an increase in quality corresponding to an increase in numerical value.

AU 65 - a gem with a touch of high point rub on the obverse, and clean fields
MS 50 - a technically uncirculated but extremely baggy coin with some hairlines and unappealing toning

It conveys the grade in a much more meaningful way, than current market grading trying to shoehorn the first coin into an MS62 (or worse, an AU58 for technical grading) and the second coin into an MS60, when those grades don't do either coin justice.