Learning To Grade

FAW

I'm new to this forum and collecting. I'm intrested in learning how to grade coins, Morgans specifically. I've read the discriptions for the various grades. Now how do I accurately transfer this information from words to coins. Is there a class? Thanks for your help!

Sequitur

Seminar. I understand people like this particular seminar in particular.

lordmarcovan

In the meantime, if you haven't already done so, you can pick up a copy of the ANA Grading Standards Guide, and maybe Photograde. PCGS also has a coin grading and counterfeit detection book.

ibzman350

ER

Go to coingrading.com and read How to Grade U.S. Coins by James Halperin. That would be a good start.

airplanenut

The best way to learn to grade? Look at coins... LOTS of them. That's what we did at the seminar mentioned by sequitur. We looked at slides, and boxes and boxes of coins. It was a great experience, both because it was fun and extremely informative. At the beginning I was close... by the end, I was on or within 1 point on about 85% of the coins.

Jeremy

ER

........and what Jeremy said.

wam98

MacCoin

welcome a board

Wolf359

It's painful!

I used inexpensive Morgans, self-graded them then submitted them to ANACS. Compared my expected results with their grades. Now I have a grading set (minimum one coin of each grade). If I get a new coin, I compare the luster to the set to ballpark it, then add strike and marks, etc to arrive at a grade.

I'm usually spot on or within one grade now, but there are still surprises, usually nice ones when my raw "63" comes back in an MS64 holder.