Grade

Quality of Coins Counterfeits

The grade of a coin is determined by the amount of wear it has received. As grade is a determinant of value, buyers are eager to verify the grades of the coins they have and to gain some reasonable assurance that the stated grades will remain the same in a buying and selling transaction. As grading is a matter of opinion, two people can look at the same coin and come up with different ideas.

Computer grading, the commercial debut of which was provided by the Professional Coin Grading Service in May 1990, may eventually reduce grading to a series of precise mathematical numbers. Even if this happens, two coins with the same number can have vastly different values, if one is aesthetically pleasing and the other is a dog. (Since 1990, little more has been heard about computer grading; for the moment, at least, the idea seems to be on hold.)

During the past century no subject has spurred more heated debate than grading, and the more precise grading becomes, the more debate it seems to engender! If grading were to be abolished Coin World, for one, would have to figure out what to do with all of the empty space on its letters to the editor page! Unquestionably, what readers write to Coin World editor Beth Deisher reflects what is on a lot of people's minds, and now in the 1990s slabbed coins are in the forefront.

Grading has an impact upon connoisseurship inasmuch as the discriminating buyer will usually endeavor to obtain the highest reasonable grade for each coin in his collection. What is reasonable and what isn't is apt to be a matter of opinion, and the concept of value enters the equation.

I can afford to pay $25 for an ordinary Hershey chocolate bar if I want to, but I won't, for I believe that it does not represent a good value at that level. Fifty cents or a dollar, yes, but $25, no. A 1936 Cincinnati commemorative half dollar certified as MS-68 changed hands in 1990, I was told, for $21,000. At the same time the market price for an MS-63 Cincinnati was $310. Even if I were John D. Rockefeller or Croesus and had all the money in the world, I would not buy an MS-68 Cincinnati half dollar for $21,000 if I could buy an MS-63 coin for $310. To me, the value just isn't there. However, for someone else the $21,000 coin might be just the ticket to numismatic happiness.

I suggest that one can be a connoisseur of commemorative half dollars and have a set which grades, say, MS-63, and be proud to display it. I mention this, for there is entirely too much pap in print these days telling coin buyers that the only way to have worthwhile coins is to buy them in the highest grades possible, regardless of cost.