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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Leadfoot, post: 1414002, member: 2972&quot;]Nobody is stopping a competitor from coming out with a better way of doing things.&nbsp; If the rigid ANA standards are so good, why does nobody use them any longer?</p><p><br /></p><p>I contend market grading (i.e. pricing or ranking coins) is actually the better way of doing things.&nbsp; Collectors/dealers don&#039;t grade coins to grade coins, they grade coins to price/sell them.&nbsp; When viewed through this lens, the value the TPGs provide as they exist today, is clear and real.</p><p><br /></p><p>The ANA grading standards are a means to no end, IMO.&nbsp; They give you a technical grade that is a more imperfect way to reach a price/rank.&nbsp; Heck, even the EAC uses net grades.&nbsp; The rigid ANA standards do not give you this latitude, to my knowledge, and as such are less perfect than market or even EAC grading, IMO.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now that doesn&#039;t fit into someone who expects the world to be black and white and to be able to grade from a written description, but it does match the challenge of the real world of pricing coins in the market.&nbsp; And that&#039;s precisely why, IMO, they have succeeded where the ANA failed.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, you might argue that gradeflation is nothing but a scheme to increase TPG profits at the expense of collectors and the market, and I would agree with you, but the underlying &quot;soft&quot; logic employed by the TPGs is superior when compared to the &quot;rigid&quot; logic of ANA grading standards, IMO.</p><p><br /></p><p>Again, I am not defending all the TPGs practices, far from it, but I am suggesting that market grading (as evidenced by the TPGs) is better than technical grading (as evidenced by the ANA) when it comes to buying/selling coins -- even as imperfect as the TPGs are.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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