Breaking News: Grading Secrets - Now It Can Be Told!

ER

Breaking news!
Here is what 's going on at PCGS / NGC / ANACS. They have rooms labeled "MS", "AU", "EF", "VF", "F", or "VG", etc., on each door. Each room has a dart board. The players, err..., graders, throw darts all day long. If your coin is lucky, the dart hits the bullseye, and it gets assigned the highest grade for that category (for example, AU58). Keep in mind that, since none of the rooms has ceiling, sometimes darts from the MS room can accidentally land on the AU board. Hence, the crack-out game. If it happens the other way, then it 's an upgrade.

Well, what about ACG / NTC, you might ask? They only have one room and one dart board, and a beer. Hence the mess.

ARCO

Now that I can believe! There must be a slot on that dart board that has a "grade coin even if harshly cleaned" category, or how else do so many baking soda cleaned, scrubbed coins get post those graders professional eyes.

Tyler

FatMan

Now it makes sense. For a while I actually thought that some guy spent 15 seconds looking at my coin and assigned it a grade. But all this dart throwing from room to room can take some time. Knowing this...75 day turn around is reasonable.

nwcs

I thought it was a game of craps. Whatever the number shows up on the dice is the grade you get. Like a 6 and 3 means MS63 and a 3 and 5 is 35. If it falls within a range of a grade, it goes to the nearest. So a 43 will go to 45 but a 42 will go to a 40.