Buying Coins Online. Coin Grades

Some AU pieces look better than their MS counterparts so it's all about what you prefer.

As to the grading issue, it's subjective of course and even a slabbed coin I look carefully at, I never take the offered grade at face value, I look for myself and so should everyone.

Common year silver dollars I'd personally aim for a set of 64's at least. They're not much of a premium over their lower graded brothers until you get to MS 65/66. Note that PL 65 is not the same as MS 65. Most PL coins are reasonable at 66.

As to dealer/seller graded coins, I pay the same attention to those as I do slabbed coins. If you find someone you really trust to deal with, it's not too often your opinion and theirs will deviate more than a point or so. Worst cases I have had personally are people with AU nickels (1920's nickels) they are tough , you have to look at a lot of them to get good at it, they are all weakly struck (vast majority anyhow) and an MS 62 can have pretty low detail quality hot out of the mint roll.

A PL coin is Proof Like, a different strike expected to be better since it was struck for collections. An MS piece is a business strike, more desirable and harder to get in higher grades. This gets confusing in later years with NBU pieces but for the silver dollar era here it holes true.

I like to buy in person, I like to take my time.

Canadian grading companies offer no actual guarantee of any kind. They offer an opinion and sell their packaging services. The vast majority of coins in graded packages are reasonably close to their grades. Not always, but most of the time.

, sweetswede!

If you can get certifed coins from PCGS, NGC or ANACS, or I think ICCS for Canadian coins, without a huge premium, it's an additional protection against fakes.

As far as the seller "assuming" the grade, it's more that the seller isn't as expert as the TPG, and thus more likely to overgrade.