Why is there no AU59?

We have grades MS60 through MS70, with no gaps. But all other levels have huge gaps. AU is generally limited to AU50, AU53, AU55 and AU58. Lower grades even more so.

So why? Surely if we can have 11 MS grades we can justify more than 4 AU grades, which is only one step down.

 

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There's also AU53. I personally don't see the need for 4 AU grades anymore than 4 VF grades. <Airplane!>And don't call me Shirley.</Airplane!>

 

Oops! Yes, missed AU53. I went back and added it in. But my point is still the same. Why do we need 11 MS grades and not 10 AU grades?

I guess the bottom line is that I am asking why we need 11 MS grades. They question, was prompted by a column in a 2006 edition of Numismatist where the author asked essentially the same question. I was curious to see what response it would bring here.

 

Why is there no AU59?

 

Some dealers do use AU59. FWIW.

 

Why bother? The added MS grades mostly consist of trivially different and unrepeatable differentiation.

AU58 suffices for "mid to high MS with a trace of wear". What else do you need? It allows us to buy a nicer coin than a dog (MS60/61) that happens to be mint state.

Pick a coin and build an XF40 to MS63 grade set - then tell us honestly (grades masked) which you like!

Besides the number of people who purposely collect AU coins is small.

 

You can always consider a 58+ a 59 if you really want that grade

 

Because the more complicated a system the more money the creators make.

 

For one the marketplace probably would not support 70 individual grades. Hardly anyone buys 60 or 61 except gold. Secondly, the ANA Board of Governors came up with the scheme for uncirculated grades.

ANA Grading Standards For U.S. Coins 7th ed. pgs. 27-28. That will give you all the grades the ANA adopted as standard for uncirculated grades. Actually, it is good there is some standard to the grading industry. The TPGs almost completely abide by it.

 

While I might usually agree with something that cynical, I can't here. The entire range from AU58 to MS63 is in flux right now. There is no market consensus on what is what. It may need a complete re-do. We may need AU62 and MS58. Then people could wrap their brains around the AU62 being worth more than a MS58.

The desire for a single uninterrupted line graph may not be realistic.

 

All that does is explain what was decided. Not why.

As you probably guessed I am playing devil's advocate here to try to get a discussion going.

 

I may be wrong but I believe people want a perfect coin. The standard has been and continues to be P-01 to MS-70. Now some folks want the grading system to go to 100. We all know the consequences to that. It has only been in recent times that MS-70 coins started happening. Therefore in lower grades certain grades can be skipped and no one cares. But I'm higher grades, no way. We must have all 11 MS grades to identify the smallest of differences.
You may or may not agree but that's my opinion and I was asked to share it so don't crucify me for it.

 

You are right in that the extra grades are the result of what collectors wanted. Collectors want hairs to be split finer with grading and quite frankly it was needed for ms grades especially with the growing popularity of moderns.

 

I would support tossing out the current system and using a 1-100 grading scale, but it would have to be split up for the three sides of the coin. Say, 1 to 45 points for each the obverse and reverse, where 45 is equivalent to the current MS70. Then 1 to 10 for the edge. The added total of three sides is the final grade. This way an otherwise perfect coin with edge dings/scratches damage can never be an "MS70" (and honestly should not be - the third side counts!). I believe this would result in a more technical and less "market grading" driven system.
Slabs would display the grade in similar fashion as used for ancients now.

 

I’ve always through that the 70 point scale was a bit odd.
The, while the grades above 65 are supposed to take the strike into account, often it doesn’t.
I’ve seen some AU Walkers that look better than some MS66 Walkers because the strike on the MS66 was very weak while the strike on the AU was nice and strong.
But just how can you put into words the difference between an AU58 and a AU59.
Say for instance a discription of an AU59 said it had to retain at least 95 percent of orginial mint luster. Just how work you measure it.

 

@Numismat What you're missing is the total move away from technical grading towards market and appearance grading given by what people want to buy ( parenthetical comment; as stupid as that is). We tried this once before when ANA owned ANACS.

Recommendations for new grading systems come about every few months. And usually die on the double edged sword of complexity and the fact that people don't really want a more (technically) accurate system. If you're buying the coin you don't really want an MS70 with a few dings - even if it is technically MS70. Come time to sell that same coin and of course it's an MS70 don't you see the label Grade from prestige TPG.


@Sundance79 the 70-point scale came from Sheldon's Penny Whimsy... it was price driven for a single variety of large cent. He would probably be greatly surprised to see it applied to everything. The coin in fair condition is worth twice as much as a coin in poor condition. PO1 and FR2. A coin in good condition four times as much and that coin in hypothetically absolute perfect condition 70 times as much.

 

I see what you're saying. The willful move away from more technical grading is something I find sad, but also understand that people want what they want

 

A grading company, CGS, in the UK is using a 100-point scale. My impression, based on UK-based forums and UK-origin youtube videos, is that it is not doing that well. I'm not referring to its profitability, but to the low number of coins graded. I think the 70-point scale used in the US is becoming more widespread in the rest of the world, largely due to increasing popularity of having coins graded by PCGS and NGC. Part of this is marketing by PCGS and NGC, but it's mostly due to desire to have easy access to the US market for world coins. A collector or dealer in the UK or Germany or China wants to be able to sell their non-US coins easily on eBay or via Heritage or other venues, and it's done most easily if the coins are in PCGS or NGC slabs. It's an instance of globalization benefitting the US.

Most collectors and dealers, whether they admit it or not, want coins graded on a single scale. Yes, wise collectors and dealers want to look at the coins themselves in certain grade ranges, but a single numeric or adjectival grade at least narrows the range. If you want a particular coin in what you define as XF, you're probably not going to look at one graded F or below or MS or above by a TPG.

Look at the pic below which is the back of old ANACS photo-grading certificate for a double eagle I once owned. It gives lots of detail, and final grade was 60/60. If you're trying to sell such a coin online and catch the attention of potential buyers using a search engine, how do you do it? Chances are, yep, you'll use MS60 without elaboration in the title of your ad. Then it's up to potential buyers to look at further details if they click on your ad. Hopefully, they'll spend most of their time looking at pics. And if they like the coin in the pics and price, they'll buy or bid. Same process would be followed though if the coin were in a slab that only stated MS60 on it.

BTW, this particular coin eventually went into a PCGS slab with a grade of MS62. And no, I'm not going to make a conclusion about grading standards based on a single example.

We inherited the 70-point scale from large cent collectors. It's too many ticks for my taste, especially now that half-point increments are being used. However, it's too well established in the US and increasingly elsewhere to believe it will be replaced anytime soon. It can be thought-provoking and sometimes entertaining to discuss other grading scales, but the 70-point, single-grade-per-coin system is here to stay.

Cal

 

@Sundance79 the 70-point scale came from Sheldon's Penny Whimsy... it was price driven for a single variety of large cent. He would probably be greatly surprised to see it applied to everything. The coin in fair condition is worth twice as much as a coin in poor condition. PO1 and FR2. A coin in good condition four times as much and that coin in hypothetically absolute perfect condition 70 times as much.[/QUOTE]

What I was trying to get at is that most things seem to be graded on a 1 to 10 or 1 to 100 scale. So as a whole 1 to 70 just doesn’t fit in.
In my 50 plus years of coin collecting I seem the Sheldon scale get sliced thinner and thinner. Can’t wait to see my first MS 63.25 graded coin.

 

First you have to understand why we have all 11 MS grades. Originally when the ANA adopted the "Sheldon" system there were only 3 MS grades, 60, 65, and 70 and 70 was a "theoretical" grade and not actually used. So in practice there were only two grades.

But due to high price jumps there was pressure to create additional in between grades. People thought "OK my coin isn't good enough to be a 65 but it is definitely better than your typical 60." and "Well it isn't perfect, but it's better than your average 65." So the ANA bowed to pressure and added 63 and 67.

The market kept rising and people started "unofficially" using the 64 grade, and the ANA started looking at adopting it officially.

About that time PCGS started operation and they were using all 11 MS grades (Although it was several years before they actually did use all of them. In their early years grades above 65 were unusual and above 67 pretty much unheard of.) This forced ANA's hand and they officially adopted all 11 MS grades.

The ANA originally only recognized AU-50 and 55. Due to market pressure I think they now recognize 53 and 58 as well. Let price differential between AU and MS continue to grow and I would think we may eventually see more AU grades.