1969-P Penny. New To Coin Grading And Have Questions

So I recently started collecting coins again, but this time I wanted to take it a step further than when I was a kid collecting. I don't find any interest in buying coins for my collection, but instead I want my collection to just be of coins that have a pretty decent value that I found by myself. I want to be able to proudly say that I painstakingly found each one and I didn't just buy them online. Anyways, with this said, I have a bunch of coins that I feel look very nice and are in great condition for their year. I'm new to the whole grading process, but I have watched some videos on what it means and all that stuff. My main question is when should I have a coin sent in to get an official grade? Also where is the cheapest place I can send it to to have it graded because I'm only 18, with no job, and my only form of income is mining bitcoins, so I have extremely little money to work with. I also don't have any good way to take pictures of coins, so some recommendations on something I can do to take better pictures would be nice. I am using my iPhone camera with a large magnifying glass put up to the camera currently.

Now, I'm sure after reading all of this you want to just see that dang coin, so before I do so, I'm going to grade it myself and see how poorly I do it compared to everyone else. I think it is around AU52-AU53. I can't wait to see what everyone else thinks about it.