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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 3135686, member: 19463&quot;]I believe the main difference with ancients is that grading is not simply a matter of wear.&nbsp; NGC recognizes three factors but still places wear ahead of strike and surface.&nbsp; To me, strike, surface and style all outrank wear.&nbsp;&nbsp; Earliest modern coins share this to a degree with their &#039;details&#039; grades but most modern collectors simple ignore coins with non-wear faults since there are so many available with none.&nbsp; Fewer than half of all ancient types even come in the highest grades. All ancients have been cleaned (some better than others).&nbsp; Many coins were not MS on the day they were made.&nbsp; Patina can actually improve a coin in most of our opinions so we might need a scale of 7000 levels rather than the Sheldon 70.&nbsp; Collectors who choose only to own perfect coins will never specialize in many fascinating areas of the hobby. </p><p><br /></p><p>Regarding write-ups:&nbsp; I enjoy write-ups that teach me something but tire of cut and paste from Wikipedia.&nbsp; I can read Wikipedia if I choose.&nbsp; Tell me something about the coin or how it might fit into either history or the big picture of the coinage of that period.&nbsp; I do not consider catalog numbers lifted from secondary sources as part of a good write-up and would rather have an explanation of the situation that made the coin RIC x rather than RIC y instead of a copied number that is not understood.&nbsp; I spent a lot of time writing up coins for my web pages but generally ignored calls for catalog clones from those whose only interest in the coins is the ID number.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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