Focusing on problem coins

coinaesthetics

I was extremely interested in the range of the 23 responses to a topic I posted yesterday, "Problem coins and the 'forgiveness' of grading services." Thoughtful comments from coinguy1, llafoe, bldask, jesbroken, Teva, DennisH, and others seemed to point to this consensus: Yes, TPG do give more latitude to older and rarer coins, and that latitude is to some degree understandable. But this does result in grading being, as lordmarcovan cleverly observes, "on the curve" with respect to age and toughness. Maybe a useful perspective is to build in an awareness of "the curve" that applies to easy and tough categories. Something 20th century and common that gets a PR66 needs to be pretty flawless. A 20 cent or 3 cent piece that gets a PR66 is far more likely to be "forgiven" a smudge here and a handling hickey there. (I have a collection of 1800s PR66s, so I should know!)

One mistake I made in my Sunday post was running two topics together. There were no responses to the other question I posed: Which categories do you think have the most problem coins? I've experienced lots of problems with coins given good grades in 1793 half cents and 1790s eagles and half eagles. Your "problem" experiences?