I just ordered these two books: Photograde: Official Photographic Grading Guide for United States Coins, 19th Edition The Official American Numismatic Association Grading Standards for United States Coins Originally I was only going to order the ANA grading book but then read several reviews that the pictures weren't so hot so I decided to order the photograde book as well. I'm pretty anxious to get my hands on these books, but until then I'd like to know what all of your thoughts are about one or both?
I have a really old ANA grading guide. I believe it helped a lot. "Problem" with photo books is they will show you AN example of a F, VF, EF, etc, but its only AN example. THere can be 100 different looking IHC that are all VF since every coin is unique. Best way to learn to grade? Do it. In your head grade every coin you see, and if you disagree with the grade given stop and really LEARN why either you were mistaken, or why you disagree with the grade given. For newbies, I always said buy a bag of nickels at the bank, and grade every coin. Make a pile for G, VG, etc. When done, go through every pile, see if you still agree, make corrections to those you now believe you initially misgraded. If you wish to keep any that is up to you, or just put them back in the bag and send back to the bank. No cost, and you just received a tremendous lesson in grading.
I was saying you will see a picture of one example only of what a VF can look like. There can be 100 different looking VF's, but a book like that will only show you what one looks like. So, you cannot use those books to "look up" grades specifically. They are GUIDES to TEACH you how to grade, not definitive references where you simply look up your coin and given a definitive answer. AN was just A, meaning one.
BTW OP, these grading skills you develop will carry over to all coins. So once you learn one, any other series is very easy, at least within US coins. It used to be for world and ancient coins take a US grade and deduct one, (meaning instead of VF its a F). Nowadays, I am not sure that applies to world coins anymore with all of the TPG plastic using US grading standards. It still applies for ancients. Basically, a VF US coin to us is a F, XF is a VF, AU/BU is a XF, and that is the top grade. Well, and also we do not "body bag" a coin for cleaning obviously, since all of our are.
Photograde is ok I guess, as a general guideline, but as Chris said, you only see one example of every grade. The best grading practice for me is to compare as many slabbed coins to raw ones as possible - in other words, if you want to learn how to grade, you've got to grade.
