Introducing The Coin Community Grading Service (Kinda)

Maybe that's the whole point of the venture. There may be those who favor the collective opinion of a bunch of friendly, well-meaning amateurs over the professional verdict of a corporation.

1893S is perfectly right in relativizing the merits of grading as an undertaking, but that does not in anyway manage to undermine the power of the "corporate" graders (is that like 'corporate raiders'?) in the marketplace. After all, grading coins is what everyone does all the time, whether or not they're buying/selling. I think that CCF here could make a meaningful statement about the grading that this community could do, and its merit being just as strong as that of the big boys.

Because of what 1893S says, not in spite of it.

Put more clearly perhaps, my point is to say that there's all the more reason to do something like this, because our collective voice is just as worthy as that of the market-approved 'corporate' voices (NGC, PCGS, and to a lesser degree some others). Not everyone here will be happy with every attribution, but that's always the case.

Except for one thing, the TPG graders are able to see the coin in hand and all we have are images. You can not grade high end coins accurately from images, and often problems on lesser coins are not visible either.