Even Coins Get Grades

Coin grading is the process of attempting to determine
a coins value. It provides a basis for both buyers and
sellers when deciding on the quality of a coin and
it’s market value.

When people first started collecting and grading
coins, they were divided into two groups or grades.
Coins were either new or used. But after awhile those
grades were much too broad. Something a little more
defining had to be used.

Even though the grading system today is much more
sophisticated, it’s still based on human
interpretation.

If you submit the same coin to 2 different grading
services, you may get 2 different grades. Sometimes
even the same service will give a coin a different
grade if it’s submitted more than once.

This has been taken advantage of by coin sellers
trying to get a higher grade for a coin so they can
put a higher price tag on it.

One company had the idea to use computers to grade
coins. But the computers showed less consistency than
human graders did.

Coin grading is a continually evolving process. As
more and more people start collecting and more coins
are passed around, the grading system grows. More
distinctions are made and more categories are created.

So even though the grading system is a good basis for
determining the value of collectable coins, it’s not
something to be believed and followed blindly.

The best thing for any new collector is to learn some
basic coin grading on their own.