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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;physics-fan3.14, post: 3311616, member: 19165&quot;]I&#039;m assuming that you are talking about their photograph app? <a href="https://www.pcgs.com/photograde/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.pcgs.com/photograde/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pcgs.com/photograde/</a></p><p><br /></p><p>This is an excellent resource, but sorely lacking in explanation. The pictures are good, but don&#039;t really help people if they don&#039;t know what they are looking for. </p><p><br /></p><p>The photograde app also doesn&#039;t really help when looking at UNC coins, either. UNC coins are graded based on strike, luster, eye appeal, and contact marks; circulated coins are graded based on wear (and are thus much easier to compare to pictures)</p><p><br /></p><p>So, looking at your coin, I&#039;m first looking at the high points (cheek, hair over the ear, eagle&#039;s breast), and I&#039;m looking for wear. That will appear as a discoloration, flatness, or change in the luster. I don&#039;t see any, so that points us to an uncirculated coin. </p><p><br /></p><p>Next, I look at the strike. This is a bit tricky, because New Orleans coins are known for not having great strikes (this appears as some &quot;mushiness&quot; in the details, especially in the hair and eagle&#039;s feathers). Your strike appears typical for an O mint coin. </p><p><br /></p><p>The luster on your coin does not appear very strong, which will hurt the grade. </p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s a bit tricky to judge the eye appeal with the dark pictures, but I see a few spots on the coin, and that doesn&#039;t help the grade. Overall, it appears to be a fairly neutral eye appeal (nothing amazing, but nothing really negative either). </p><p><br /></p><p>Finally, the contact marks: contact marks, especially in prime areas, kill the grade of a coin. I see a few marks on the cheek (one of the most important areas), a few in the obverse fields in front of her face, a few scattered around the eagle. A couple of the marks are fairly large, but most of them aren&#039;t too bad. </p><p><br /></p><p>If you put all that together, you can come up with a grade. I&#039;d call this one MS-63. </p><p><br /></p><p>This Strike, Luster, Eye Appeal, and Contact Marks method of grading is how I teach everyone to grade (I call it SLEC). I think it is extremely useful, and helps you understand exactly what&#039;s going on with the coin. If you want more information, and more detail, about how to grade coins, I highly recommend you buy a grading book. There are a few good ones, and if you do a quick search of recent threads you can find recommendations.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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