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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jaelus, post: 7857630, member: 46237&quot;]No, that system has <i>never</i> existed. AU58 with &quot;conservative&quot; grading is an extremely <i>imprecise</i> grade. It does not describe the overall condition of the coin. It only describes the miniscule portion of the condition that is worn.</p><p><br /></p><p>For a PO1, a wear-based grade is phenomenal. It describes all of the coin very precisely because <i>all of the coin</i> is heavily worn. The wear-based grade for circulated coins continues to precisely describe the condition as you move up the scale, because all surfaces are worn, and you are concerned with the amount of detail that hasn&#039;t worn off.</p><p><br /></p><p>Once you hit VF35 you start to get miniscule traces of original surface on the coin. A wear-based grade is still great here, but as you move up the scale into XF and finally AU the overall percentage of the coin that is <i>original</i> increases. As this happens, the percentage of the coin that you are able to describe by only noting the level of wear <i>decreases</i>, and so a description of wear becomes progressively less precise (and less relevant) as there is less percentage of the coin that actually has wear.</p><p><br /></p><p>In other words, on a VF20, describing <i>only</i> the level of wear gives you a precise description of 100% of the surfaces, but by the time you get up to AU58, a grade describing the existence of <i>wear</i> is describing less than 1% of the surfaces of the coin. As a grade it ignores the other 99.8% of the surfaces and describes <i>nothing </i>about them whatsoever. It&#039;s like describing the condition of a car by saying there is a scratch on the rear bumper. Ok, but <i>what about the rest of the car</i>?</p><p><br /></p><p>Now I am a pragmatist, and I find a description of wear for circulated coins <i>is</i> precise for a very long time. For me, once you get up to A quality AU55 coins (AU55+) , a description of the amount of wear suddenly becomes almost irrelevant for precisely describing the condition of the coin because almost all of the surfaces are original.</p><p><br /></p><p>The areas of wear at that point are comparable to a minor surface impairment, and if you want a precise description of the condition, you need to focus on the original surfaces, because they are the vast majority of the coin. In other words, not enough wear exists to really care about wear <i>in terms of using it to produce a grade</i>. Do I still care at that point that the coin is circulated? Absolutely. I&#039;m just saying that in order to be descriptive, qualitative grading needs to start at AU55+ instead of at 60. Perhaps after AU55 we single step from Q57-Q67 (Q for quality, with a mandatory AU or MS designation in that range), followed by MS68-70.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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