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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Paul M., post: 3522721, member: 73165&quot;]Wear most definitely <i>is</i> special.&nbsp; It&#039;s one of a very small number of types of damage we tolerate before calling a coin a &quot;problem coin.&quot;&nbsp; Generally speaking, we tolerate anything that could have happened in normal circulation and don&#039;t tolerate things that could not have.&nbsp; The things that are tolerable include wear, bag marks, and potentially a few hairlines.</p><p><br /></p><p>But, the thing that makes wear special among even the types of damage we tolerate is that wear impairs luster and degrades detail.&nbsp; Isolated hairlines (not from cleaning!) do not impair overall luster, and do not appreciably degrade the detail of the coin.&nbsp; Moreover, since wear is expected on the high points of a coin, this is taken into account in the grading system, and <i>does not</i> fundamentally count against the coin.&nbsp; Bag marks on the high points or prime focal areas <i>do</i> count against a coin, as do distracting hairlines.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Uncirculated&quot; is just as meaningless a term as &quot;artificial toning,&quot; IMO.&nbsp; We&#039;ve had the debates about AT vs questionable color before, so I won&#039;t go into it here, but, nobody can truly say whether a coin with no wear has circulated or not unless they literally either pulled it from a mint bag or from circulation themselves.&nbsp; This is why those coins are rightly graded &quot;Mint State,&quot; and not &quot;Uncirculated.&quot;&nbsp; &quot;Mint State&quot; is a state in which a coin <i>could have</i> left the mint.&nbsp; Coins get banged around a good deal at the mint, so, bag marks are acceptable here, but wear is not, simply because they don&#039;t suffer the kind of friction that would induce wear at the mint.</p><p><br /></p><p>Totally consistent.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Again, these are totally consistent, provided you define &quot;wear&quot; to be something that can only happen over time in circulation.&nbsp; And that&#039;s what I think people who want to talk about &quot;cabinet/roll/stacking friction&quot; are getting at.&nbsp; I don&#039;t have a problem with that, but I do think it should be more rigorously incorporated into the grading standards, generally speaking.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>What&#039;s meaningless about &quot;a state in which a coin <i>could have</i> left the mint&quot;?&nbsp; That&#039;s meaningful and completely consistent.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Come on, now.&nbsp; If you&#039;ve used the Sheldon system in practice <b>at all</b>, you know it&#039;s really two grading scales: one for mint state coins, and one for non-mint state coins.&nbsp; The very first step in deciding the grade of a coin is to figure out whether it&#039;s Mint State or not.&nbsp; Most of the time, that&#039;s easy, so we forget about it.&nbsp; Within the two scales, among problem-free coins, we do have a linear representation of quality.&nbsp; You could even argue that the Sheldon scale as a whole is a linear representation of quality in the form of surface preservation, where wear is the most important factor.</p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t think that&#039;s what you&#039;re trying to say.&nbsp; Correct me if I&#039;m wrong, but I think you&#039;re trying to say that the scale is not a linear representation of <i>value</i> or <i>price</i>, and those things are completely subjective based on market whims (<i>c.f.</i> toned vs non-toned coins).&nbsp; If you want a scale that has this property, then you&#039;ve got it: the $ scale; starts at face value and goes to infinity.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Yeah, like you&#039;ve never come across blurry or deceptive photos on eBay.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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