AU-55 Sheldon

Wow, just got what I think was *intended* to be a threat... Basically was... "Deal with these *turkeys* or remove my account."

Decision made, and it was my easiest one this week.

I was just starting to have some fun and the bat and ball have left the park
Now all I can do is lay an egg and roost up for a while

You are seriously wrong there. They are stating the coin is graded as AU55 by PCGS. Nothing more. Nothing less. At least those collectors who are willing to take the time have the opportunity to understand how PCGS arrives at that grade. The same cannot be said for the VAST majority of coin sellers because they grade to an unknown standard.




Nothing short of misinformation. PCGS grade to their standards. They are not inadvertently over grading anything. They are grading to THEIR STANDARD. They have nothing to say about Australian grading standards.

I agree. It is the sellers of slabs that are attempting to introduce a new grading system. The onus is therefore on them to explain their new grading system, whenever they are attempting to sell a coin using the new grading system. Otherwise, it's like introducing a new currency system without bothering to explain to anyone how to convert between new money and old money - especially if the new devalued coins have the same names as the old ones.


But will they arrive at the correct answer? Let's do some hypothetical research.

Suppose our hypothetical AU55 coin is up for sale. A prospective buyer knows a bit about grading coins but nothing about the Sheldon scale or PCGS (an entirely likely scenario in Australia at the moment). If they Google PCGS, they'll find it easily, and (if they take the time to explore the site a bit) should eventually find their grading standards page. Excellent. Of course, there's no warning anywhere on the PCGS website that different grading standards exist and that PCGS grades may not equate to local grades in Australia or Britain. If anyone's ever told PCGS that their grading is shoddy compared to Australian and British standards, they don't care.

Now they pick up their trusty Renniks or Maccas Guide to try to find out what the coin is worth. Hmm, there's no "AU55" there. Where does AU55 fit into the catalogue grading scheme? "AU" presumably means "aUnc", but better make sure. Better Google it. Maybe then, they'll discover the CCF Glossary page, or some other American-based website, that will tell them "The grade of "Choice AU" equates to AU55.".

But if they don't happen to stumble upon a website like this thread, where it is being made very clear by everyone on both sides of the debate that PCGS AU55 does not equal Australian Choice aUnc, or if they happen to notice that there are serious discrepancies between the published PCGS grading standard for AU55 and the (extrapolated) definition for "Choice aUnc" in Maccas or Renniks, than they will likely conclude that a highly reputable third party grading company has graded the coin Australian Choice aUnc, and will think the coin is therefore worth somewhere between the aUnc and Unc columns, when in fact they should be looking in the EF column.

You can fairly blame someone for not doing research at all. But it is unfair to blame someone for doing due diligence and not happening to discover the truth, which is, after all, rather well hidden at the moment. Slabs are supposed to exist to protect newbies from some of the hazards of the hobby (such as overgrading), but right now, the way slabs are being introduced into the Australian coin marketplace, I think they're more likely to trip newbies up.

They will probably be thanking their lucky stars that they didn't get sucked into buying Seller A's misleading aUnc priced AU55, and hopefully re-evaluate purchases of coins until such time as they have done some more research on market values and grading.

*sigh* Again SAP all very interesting arguments and all applicable (and more so) to raw coins. Australian sellers of raw coins pretty much grade to whatever standard they like. Don't believe me? Pick 10 EF 1954 florins from 10 different dealers and you'll likely get 10 very different coins. How, pray tell, does the new collector have ANY chance of working this system out? At least PCGS do make available what standard they grade to. Surely A SYSTEM is easier to learn than what we have in Australian now, which is NO SYSTEM.

I don't think there is a hard and fast conversion. It all depends on the denomination and year etc. I'll mostly call a MS65+ a gem, but in some cases not and some MS62's are unc but I might call them borderline AU. I might even give a split grade. Other Australian sellers will call MS64 a gem. I don't know what standard they are grading to. Another dealer I know is directly influenced by UK grading so his Australian grading is a lot weaker. What grading standard does Downies use? Steele Waterman? Edlins in Canberra? VP Coins? Nobles?

*sigh* Thanks for the insult. I've been collecting more than long enough to know what a shambles adjectival grading is in Australia. You are naive to believe that the ANDA standard is either universally applied or even correctly applied in Australia.




PCGS graded coins have been around in Australia since the mid 1990's and fully fledged for the last 10 years. Don't believe me? There's several letters in ACR's from the mid 1990's from Klaus Ford railing against TPG's. I should also add that if it's got very little with the way you collect why do you spend so much of your time opposing it instead of collecting coins? Why not let the rest of us get on with collecting the way we want to and you get on with yours.