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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;beef1020, post: 1845895, member: 24544&quot;]Someone else pointed it out earlier, but I will reiterate and add detail.&nbsp; The Sheldon grading system we use today was originally designed to work as a price system.&nbsp; Each variety had a &#039;basal value&#039; which was the price for that coin in a grade of 1.&nbsp; So if the coin had a basal value of $1 and graded 12 then it was worth $12.&nbsp; If the coin had a grade of 40 then it was worth $40.&nbsp; This quickly fell apart as a useful tool to estimate the value of the coin, although we still use the underlying grading scheme.</p><p><br /></p><p>The major fault of the system was assuming a linear relation between grade and price, i.e. if a vf20 is worth $100 then a xf40 should be worth $200.&nbsp; The dynamics of the coin market are such that to the extent there exists a relationship it&#039;s exponential not linear.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>One concrete piece of advice I would offer is to choose a series that was not hoarded, so morgans are out, and look at auction records of the one year at varies grade levels.&nbsp; For instance, go to heritage and find out how much PCGS graded 1914 Lincoln cent go for in different grades, f12, vf20, xf40, au50, 64, 65, 66, 67.&nbsp; Your levels don&#039;t need to be too fine.&nbsp; Take the average of the last 3 coins or so which sold and plot those sale prices against the grade.&nbsp; You&#039;ll see the exponential nature of the curve, do a best fit and find an equation that does a reasonable job matching the data.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Once you have this, you can test it against some other coins you are interested in.&nbsp; You will now have an equation which describes the curve of the price by grade scale and you will have an initial condition which you will need for each series, i.e. low grade indian head nickels sell for less than low grade bust halfs, but as long as the series or coin was not hoarded or otherwise had it&#039;s survival numbers messed with, the same equation describing the price to grade curve should be reasonable.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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