Let's Play a Game - Grade that Coin (and an intro to the group)

you're missing my point.

those heat maps will help you determine where to look for points of low strike and help you determine the depth of strike on your MS coins

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Grading coins can't be anything but subjective. You could hide (random number pulled from my head) 5 square millimeters worth of "gouge" on a Buffalo and never see any of it, but one mark of that total size on the cheek and it's not going over MS62.

 

SuperDave - As long as people are using their eyes, experience and some guidelines you are totally right, it will be very subjective. But I'll make a prediction - with software based on some of the current facial recognition software used by law enforcement around the world, a totally objective coin grading system could be developed. It could take into account the size and location of a gouge, toning, strike and a host of other factors and weigh them all equally from coin to coin, day after day, and not get tired. It could also provide a printout of all the defects in the coin that were considered for the grading it received. So when someone got their coin back that they were sure would grade as an MS69, but came back as an MS68, the printout would tell them why it wasn't the MS69 they thought it should be.

Now someone might say that subjectivity is built in via the programming of the software, and they would be right. BUT - my point is all the parameters that would be coded in the software would be consistent from coin to coin to coin. So you wouldn't have one human grader giving more or less weight to the size and placement of a gouge than another human grader. The program wouldn't get tired, or have a bad day, or get in a fight the night before with their spouse, or come to work sick becasue they had already used up all their sick days. These are just a small list of the human factors that can affect a human based grading system.

 

How would the program market grade coins? Because the TPGs don't technically grade them, they market grade them.

 

I'm sure someone could come up the algorithm to handle that aspect.