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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 3234550, member: 112&quot;]There are 3 books that I always recommend - the ANA grading book, the PCGS grading book, and How to Grade US coins by James Halperin. The 3rd used to be available online, and the text still is, but the website is so old that none of the pictures or illustrations work anymore. But in the book they still do.</p><p><br /></p><p>Those are just the first 3. But my full recommendation is to buy and read every book on the subject that you can find - and that&#039;s a lot of books. But if you do it you&#039;ll have a better background and a better understanding of grading than you get in any other way. Of course you still won&#039;t know how to grade, but you must have the background and understanding before you can learn how to grade. And that&#039;s the best way there is to get it.</p><p><br /></p><p>I would also make a few other recommendations, or perhaps basic guidelines is a better way to put it. By all means, look at pictures, look at hundreds of thousands of pictures ! But don&#039;t try to learn how to grade based on pictures ! Pictures are useful because they show you examples, provide your mind with information. But they can also be harmful unless you have the understanding that any picture is only an example of how 1 specific coin was graded. Ya see, there&#039;s about 9 different things that can change or effect the grade of a coin, and any single one of them can do that. And if you looked at 9 different coins, all the same coin, and all the same grade - there can be 9 different reasons, and or combinations of 9 different reasons, that the grade was limited to what it is, or elevated to what it is. So looking at a picture, or a hundred pictures, won&#039;t tell you what those reasons are. And any or all of them may or may not be on any coins you subsequently try to grade. That is the limitation of pictures. </p><p><br /></p><p>To learn how to grade accurately and correctly you first have to learn all the criteria, how to recognize them, know them when you see them, know the pluses and minuses that each has, and how much they add or detract from the grade - and why ! And you can&#039;t get any of that by looking at pictures. The only ways you can get it is by studying the written word or hands on teaching from another who already knows how to grade.</p><p><br /></p><p>Once you get all of that down pat, then it is the hands on with coins that comes into play. By looking at and studying the coins in hand, that is when the knowledge you have already learned comes into play. That knowledge allows you to see things you otherwise wouldn&#039;t have even seen. It is what allows you to know what it is when you do see it, and to know what effect it has on the grade in either direction. </p><p><br /></p><p>Another thing, learning where all the high points on coins are is great stuff to learn. But don&#039;t fall into the trap of thinking that wear always occurs on the high points of a coin first. It absolutely does not always occur there first ! Yeah, it very well might, and it commonly does, but it does not always ! It is quite common, stress quite common, for wear to first appear on the lowest points of a coin - the fields ! Wear can literally first appear anywhere on a coin ! One can never forget that. And all wear, located anyplace, caused by anything, is still wear. And if <u>any wear, anywhere</u> is present then the coin absolutely cannot be graded MS.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is also a great idea to read any and all articles you can find on the subject of grading. This is because articles tend to deal more with specific series than many books do. And yeah there are plenty of books written about specific series and grading them. But I don&#039;t know of anybody who can buy them all, or has. </p><p><br /></p><p>A big part of the reason for reading, researching, and studying as much as you possibly can is because by doing so you will soon come to find out that much of what you find is in direct contradiction with what you have found elsewhere. And it is then incumbent upon you to determine who is right and who is wrong. And don&#039;t ever think that just because something is written in a book that it is true - a great deal of the time it is not ! But you won&#039;t ever even have the ability to recognize if something in a book is true or not unless you have the requisite knowledge to do so. </p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, buy all the books you can buy and read everything you can read. Do that and you&#039;ll be well on your way to learning how to grade.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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