Eye Appeal Vs TPG Vs Rarity

If it is an issue you are likely to find a substitute for without much difficulty, don't buy it unless you love it. If the coin is harder to come by, you will have to balance eye appeal against scarcity and grade value. If it going to be your only chance in a long time, if ever, to buy in a grade you can afford, you might want to snap it up. For example, I am working on a set of pre-1861 Seated dimes. Many issues have fewer than 100 known in mint state condition. There is not a high demand for this series, so many of the higher grade pieces make there way around slowly, but often remain available for longer than one would think. I have followed the same coin for months before I decide to buy, or someone pulls the trigger first. So you can usually avoid a rush to judgment.
Eye appeal can be greatly enhanced by toning, and a beautifully toned, one of a kind MS 63 can bring more ownership joy than a bright and shiny "gem" that looks like a lot of other bright and shiny gems. The gem is replaceable, the toned coin is unique and is not. Again, as an example, I have a beautiful, original AU50 1859-O Seated dime with attractive multi-color toning that looks nicer than any mint state example I have seen of that date, or several other dates. And buying the lower grade saved me a lot of money.
I think technical grade (that's all it is) is way too important in pricing. It might be worth more on resale, but your initial investment will be higher.
Before I buy, I systematically check out every option available I know of for the coin I want to buy. I don't buy the coin I am looking at if I can find an example I like better unless cost makes buying the "better" coin unreasonable.
My main observation on grade is that it can really jack the price up, and if you are going to pay more, you better like it enough more to justify the cost difference.
To me, it is a real serendipity to find a coin I love in a lower grade than I expected to buy.

"The challenge is finding one for $500 or less." Well, not sure who would be willing to sell a coin like that for a price like that when much more could be gained, and quite easily. Demand does set the price, not the individual IMO.

Slerk, I totally concur. For me, each coin has potentially it's own story and that's what I find fascinating. Often a coin with visible wear is more appealing, to me, than a near perfect MS.

thq, it seems to me that forums like ebay have forever changed the hobby, bringing in many more novice collectors who may be unwittingly driving prices upward. I also think that the pandemic may be contributing to some degree and scarcity of some coins may occur more than in past. But, I could be mistaken. I watch coins of interest on ebay and am frequently shocked at the prices being paid.

I think that for collectors, which the majority of us on this website, eye appeal is something important to us. When we are looking to fill a hole in our collection, we want something that looks nice and we are proud to own. It's more than just a math game for how much of a margin we think we can score when we flip it sooner than later. We are a skewed sample size.

Also, those of us on the website are just browsing around. Few of us those that post on a thread are actively collecting the series at topic a lot of the time. And for the few who are, not many are chasing the listed coin too. So weather its an XF or an MS65 may be secondary to "oh, that's pretty!" because most of us don't actually have skin in the game. Stuff that gets comments is usually either pretty or ugly, and the mundane doesn't motivate entering replies as people move on to look for other things more interesting. Eye appeal is interesting and gets people talking! (In my 6 years on this board, I can only think of a couple times that I saw a topic, went on the hunt for that listing, and became a bidder on it.)

TPG's have commoditized coins and their populations reports have shown us what is actually rare or at what point something might become rare. It has certainly allowed for dealers to buy and trade coins based on a label with no regard to eye appeal, and in many instances, coins are traded sight unseen because of the label.

Rarity is a funky word and should assume supply and demand. Is a coin rare is there are 5 in the world but only 1 person cares to chase it down? Is a coin rare if there are 10,000 of them but 100,000 people hop on a website for the second of go-live in hopes of being among the lucky 10%? In the US markets, there are very few truly rare coins with surviving specimens counting as handful or dozen. - Its demand and competition on US coins that makes things like the 1893-S "rare" even though there are over 80 on ebay right now, and Heritage, Stacks, and Great Collections probably have a few more right now, and there are a few thousand sitting in collections. It's not a rare coin. My 382 AD Western Satraps coin has about 5 known specimens and I was lucky to pry it from the gentleman who wrote the book on the series... and I paid a lot less than a G4 1893-S for it.

ebay definitely increased the availability of coins. 20 years ago a lot of time was spent going to shops and shows, finding coins by random luck. ebay sped that up. There are still bargains but not as often.

Definitely eye appeal first Just Carl, but after that, for most of us, comes budget. If budget were never an issue I'd be travelling the world to examine potential buys in person.