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Message:: [QUOTE="World Colonial, post: 2452989, member: 78153"]I presume most if not all of the replies here are for grading of US coins so I'll answer for world coins, particularly those I collect. NGC and PCGS grades are US centric and don't necessarily align with standards used in the home market.  They probably actually never do.  Since US collectors usually (but not always) buy coins using the TPG standards or their own which are more reflective of US practices, the grade assigned in the US versus elsewhere frequently differs. The series where I have noticed the greatest difference is with Spanish and Spanish colonial coins.  I occasionally buy coins from auction house Calico and I'd say theirs are stricter.  Additionally, US collectors incorporate "market acceptability" which doesn't exist elsewhere (at least in the same way) because without assigning numerical grades to a slab, there aren't any "details" grades either.  Calico "net grades" their listings instead. For the pillar coinage in particular, I find both NGC and PCGS inconsistent.  I can't say they are "wrong" but I can tell you that I find it very common to prefer a lower graded coin over a supposedly "better" one with a higher grade.  Sometimes this is because the coin with the higher grade isn't "original" but other times I have no idea how they assigned the grade they did.[/QUOTE]