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Message:: [QUOTE="fiddlehead, post: 1287038, member: 31286"]This grading thing is really tough.  I've spent a lot of time trying to grade my own raw coins fairly in my records - and I do tend to agree with most of the graded coins I see - only those I have familiar with of course (particularly Morgan dollars and double eagles).   It seems like you win some and you lose some.  I recently purchased from a dealer the key date 1889 CC Morgan, VF30 graded by NGC and I think if I cracked it and had it regraded there's a good chance it would go XF40 - which would double it's hypothetical value.  But I've also seen things like this Barber that sure look like VF 20 to 30 to me (although I don't have much experience with Barber's either, but eagle's wings are eagle's wings, aren't they?  These aren't too sharp). What's a collector to do?   Buy the coin not the grading service, I guess. On Ebay, I notice that some, but not all sellers tend to inflate the likely grade of their raw coins - I recently saw one that was advertised as XF+ that was definitely not (and even it was, would be details due to damage) but it brought XF money - even though on the same day there was another coin being sold by a dealer that was a lot closer to a true XF coin with a Buy it now price of less than what the bogus XF went for.  Go figure![/QUOTE]