Seems like the 100 point grading scale debate has been going on since the 1970's

Longacre · January 24, 2006 2:09AM

I am continuing to read the Abe Kosoff Remembers book. In one article, dated January 2, 1974, he addresses the then current debate about increasing the grading scale from 70 points to 100 points. I was a mere pup back then, barely out of diapers, so I don't have any first-hand account of what went on. Here are some selected quotes from the book:

"...[the 70 point grading scale] has been in use for 25 years, and has served its purpose very well. In fact, our auction sales have adopted this scale to other series of coins, and it worked nicely. Suggestions have been made that a scale of 1 to 100 would be better, and I would be inclined to agree, if we were to start from scratch. ...So let us not place too much importance on what scale we use; the one now in use has worked beautifully. That is not the problem; the problem is proper application of the scale. We can use a 70, 80, 90, 100, or 100... ...If proper grading is applied, then the scale is only important to the extent that everybody is using the same scale."

Seems like the same arguments today!

TheRaven · January 24, 2006 2:23AM

This does not surprise me, except I think with all the coins which are slabbed it would be alot more difficult to change to a new grading scale.....

I don't think this will happen any time soon either.....

Conder101 · January 24, 2006 9:20AM

Longacre, something to remember when you read that. The 25 years he mentions goes all the way back to when Sheldon first created the 70 point PRICING scale in 1949. In 1974 when that article was written the adoption of the 70 point grading scale was still 4 years in the future and almost no one other than the EACers, Paramount, and Kosoff were using the 70 point system. And the EACers ha just recently abandoned it as a pricing scale (Up till 1970 EAC was still trying to adjust the basel state values to force the 70 point scale to work to predict prices.) So there was no written 70 point grading scale at the time that was written. But there was already discussion going on to create an official ANA grading guide. At that time the scale could just as easily have gone to a 100 point scale instead of the 70 that was adopted and there would not have been problems or confusion since there would not have been any old system to unlearn.

(Frankly changing to a 100 point system today would not really cause any real problems except for all of the previously graded slabs out there in the marketplace. The numbers that are assigned to the grade words actually have no real meaning except to indicate which is the higher grade. There is no realtionship between the grades, there is no measurement that it taken to arrive at that number. It is just another arbitrary adjective. Before the adoption of the so-called Sheldon system we had Pr, Fr, AG, G,F,VF, XF, AU, and UNC Afterwards we had Pr-1, Fr-2, AG-3, G-4, VG-8, F12, VF-20, XF-40, AU-50, and MS. Other than changing Unc to MS and putting a number next to the already existing grade levels nothing really changed.)

Seems like the 100 point grading scale debate has been going on since the 1970's

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