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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jaelus, post: 3515732, member: 46237&quot;]My way of thinking is rather in line with ancients collectors and quite a significant number of collectors who don&#039;t give a hoot about third party grading. I don&#039;t know what the actual percentage is, but I can assure you it is much greater than 0.2%.</p><p><br /></p><p>Continuing a broken system simply because it&#039;s the way things have been done in the past is not an acceptable justification. I&#039;m trying to get people thinking here. Do I believe that coins are no longer MS as soon as they leave the mint, no. My belief is rather the opposite, that coins should be graded in the 60s that have wear; not in order to designate these coins MS, but rather to <i>decouple the concept</i> that 60-69 grades are exclusively for mint state coins. The TPGs have already been doing this with MS60-62 coins quite liberally, but it is not the grade that is improper - it is the <b>MS</b> prefix.</p><p><br /></p><p>First, you have to ask yourself what the point of the grading scale is. Is it for the sake of assigning a number that is &quot;technically correct&quot; but has no practical value? No. Grading a collectible has a very real purpose, and that purpose is singular - <b>to identify quality of the collectible for the purpose of valuation</b>. To that end, an increase in grade <i>must be</i> directly coupled to an increase in value, or else the scale is not working.</p><p><br /></p><p>In serving the purpose of a collectible grading scale, it is obvious that the Sheldon scale is <i><b>completely and utterly broken</b></i> at the AU/MS boundary, and something should be done about it. Take a look at this chart. I have plotted technical grade on the horizontal axis, and coin quality on the vertical axis. The blue line (max quality) represents the top quality coins for the grade, and the orange line (min quality) represents the bottom quality coins for the grade.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]933356[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The scale breaks down sharply at the AU/MS boundary, since coins with negligible wear but exceptional quality are artificially held back by the AU58 ceiling, and on the other side, coins of exceptionally poor quality are artificially propped up by the MS60 floor.</p><p><br /></p><p>The best way to fix this is by changing the names of the AU and MS designations to something tied to quality instead of <i>state</i>, so that mint state coins may range below 60 and coins with wear may range above 58.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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