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Message:: [QUOTE="lordmarcovan, post: 2751111, member: 10461"]After a few years of bulk bag cherrypicking world coin lots, I evolved my own set of extremely basic standards which can be used as a general rule of thumb for grading most anything coinlike or medallic "on the fly".  (Except perhaps really minimalistic designs with just lettering and/or no pictorial elements). It is mostly adapted from the grading section at the front of the Krause catalogs. Generally speaking, you can quickly assign a coin to most of the basic grade levels based on estimated details alone: <ul> <li>MS: 100% of the original details (no wear) + luster</li> <li>AU: 99% of the original detail + luster</li> <li>XF: 90% of the original detail</li> <li>VF: 75% of the original detail</li> <li>F: 50% of the original detail</li> </ul>Obviously this is only the most cursory set of standards, but it's easy to remember and can be applied to most anything.  Once you've got this set of standards committed to memory, you can extrapolate and fine-tune your examination of a coin from there.  But those are the basics. Learning to grade World coins unsurprisingly made me better at grading US coins. For some types one focuses on a particular feature at the high part of the design.  For example, I always grade post-1928 Irish predecimal coins by the frame of the harp.[/QUOTE]