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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;vavet, post: 361909, member: 11630&quot;]With regard to the Mickley 1804 Dollar, Breen graded it XF-AU poorly cleaned. Bowers graded it AU50. Bressett and Newman graded it &quot;very nearly uncirculated&quot; and when it was auctioned in 1867 it was described as having &quot;been in circulation&quot;. I agree that Walter Breen was a colorful guy, but there is no doubt in my mind that he was able to determine that the Mickley Dollar was circulated. In fact, it&#039;s obvious that it&#039;s circulated just by the recent picture that appeared in COIN WORLD. My point is that grading today is a farce and NGC giving that coin a 62 grade is nothing short of being proof positive. As for the Bowers grade, he probably graded that coin back when there was sanity in grading standards. I checked my 1970 edition of PHOTOGRADE and IMO Bowers was being generous by the standards of the day. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Third party grading was supposed to standardize this kind of nonsense but as GDMSP accurately stated, everyone has their own standards which negates any ligitimacy of numerical grading. That&#039;s what is ludicrous, which was my point in my original post. The coin in question grades 67 only if one subscribes to the standards of the grader and has confidence that the grader was on his &quot;A&quot; game when s/he assigned the grade. Maybe it a 68 or perhaps a 66 depending on what standards are in play at the time. Furthermore, I too have been a firm believer that PCGS has quotas for the 70 grade which if true is pure manipulation of the market. Why anyone would consider the actions by those kinds of organizations to be ligitimate is beyond me. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Ya know, GDJMSP, If you are as knowledgable as many on this board suggest, then you know as well as I the various grading experiments that have been conducted over the years, and you should also be aware of the results. If on the other hand you really aren&#039;t aware, I&#039;ll be happy to provide you with several examples. In the meantime, since you have the email address of COIN WORLD, you could ask Beth Deisher about the experiment they conducted a few years ago. It wasn&#039;t that long ago that this very topic came up in a conversation I was having with her. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>One more point about &quot;market grading&quot; where grades get inflated because the demand for certain grades cannot be met by the existing supply. Imagine if you will, going into a coin store looking for a specific XF coin and the dealer states that there aren&#039;t any available but if you wait a minute, he&#039;s got a few VF&#039;s that he will overgrade in order to meet the existing demand for XF&#039;s. Market grading is a cute little phrase but that&#039;s exactly what the process involves. Shame on me for thinking that changes in pricing rather than grading should be what creates equilibrium.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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