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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;messydesk, post: 3647549, member: 1765&quot;]I&#039;m on a roll!&nbsp; I agree with your assessment of why MS64.&nbsp; As for the concensus being 1.9 points low, it made me wonder about the way grades are simply ranked numerically in general (not simply for this study).&nbsp; When we assign a grade, we are projecting a the quality of a coin from the 4-dimensional &quot;hypercube of quality&quot; (surfaces, strike, luster, eye appeal) to a 1-dimensional grade.&nbsp; The &quot;surfaces&quot; dimension of that is actually a little more complicated, in that not only can they be worn, but they can be beat up -- two separate, mostly independent continua.&nbsp; You constantly hear that AU58 is typically nicer than MS61, as it is an MS62-63 coin that has a touch of wear noticeable on it.&nbsp; Heck, my broadstruck 21-S Morgan is a 65 with a touch of rub on it.&nbsp; An MS61 with wear shouldn&#039;t grade better than 55, and a worn MS60 would grade 53.&nbsp; Something similar might also be observable for XF45 (an AU53 with a little too much wear) and VF35 (an XF45 with too much wear).&nbsp; It would seem that what we think of as a wear continuum between 1 and 58 sometimes isn&#039;t.&nbsp; Mathematically, it would almost be like saying x - 1 + 1 does not necessarily equal x.&nbsp; For example, take away one aspect that knocked a coin down to AU53, and it doesn&#039;t necessarily go up to AU55, it may go up to MS61.&nbsp; What does this mean for the study?&nbsp; Probably almost nothing, since trying to figure out everyone&#039;s interpretation of how AU58 ranks within a grading scale would be folly, but it wouldn&#039;t be unrealistic to put AU58 above MS61.&nbsp; If I do this, the average grade becomes 62.5.&nbsp; Food for thought on a Monday morning.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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