Grading Coins

There is no great mystery to grading coins but there is a lot of controversy. it depends on wether or not you are collecting for fun (hobby0 or collecting for profit (investing). This article is about your hobby so have some fun with it.

Many years ago grading coins was fairly simple. It cosisted of simple grades, which ranged from Fair to prrof. Somewhere along the line investors decided to get in on the "hobby" and developed a system called M.S. grading, or "mint state" grading as the initials stand for. I will attempt to unravel simple grading here.

Coins normally start with a grade of "Good". This would be the minimal grade you would want to collect in or you will be attempting to upgrade with a better coin later. There are also grades beneath good which would include "almost good"(AG), Fair (Fr.") and Filler.You might want a filler grade for an extremely rare date just to say you have the coin but it is generally advised that you collect at Good or above.The next grade is Very Good (VG),then Fine (Fn),Very Fine (VF,Extra Fine (Ef), A.U. (Almost Uncirculated, Uncirculated (Unc.), and Proof (Pf.).

A great place to view the differences in the simple grading system would be to obtain a guide book called The Photograding Guide. You should obtain an older copy from a source such as Amazon or Half.com really cheap. The photo's in this book tell you about the grades and use photographs of different coins in different grades. Until the M.S. system came along this was the bible of grading U.S. coins. There is also a lot of imformation that touches on other subjects about U.S. coins.

Learn to grade coins yourself before you attempt to buy them from a dealer and when you are comfortable with your new knowledge do not hesitate to ask your dealer how he came to the grade he assigned to the coin if you think it might be wrong. But always be polite as your dealer has many years of experiance in his subject matter and you want to stay on his/her good side as you may be able to work better deals in price with him as the two of you become aquainted.

A good place to obtain timely imformation on U.S. coins is a publication called Numismatic News which is published every week and also includes a price guide once a month. It is available from Krause Publications and is a wise investment for beginners and experienced alike. Anothe publication is Coin World but it tends to drift in subject matter covering U.S. and world coins and paper money.

This is just the beginning to grading coins and I will do an article soon about the M.S. system of grading at a later date. This article was intenede to help you get your feet wet only.