AU-55 Sheldon

Almost uncirculated at the middle of the scale

Don't get me started on the Sheldon scale I hate it.
AU 55 would be just AU in REAL terms, The way I grade an AU is;
aAU,AU,AU+,gAU,vfAU,aUNC.
That in my opinion is a far more accurate way of grading

If 60 is the starting point of the UNC I cannot see how a grade of 55 could be ef or even gEF.
EF would finish at 50 as far as I can understand the Sheldon system.
I may be wrong and if I am I will apologize but I don't think that I am

sap but why the AU designation if it isn't almost uncirculated
The Sheldon system has to be infallible because pcgs is "banking" on it and it is being forced down our necks by the slobbers.
I have no difficulty at all in using the old school system , I and most of the rest of the world understand it so why are we getting overwhelmed by this 70 point system that most of us only have a basic understanding of is beyond me

Do you want the short answer, or the long answer?

Here's the long answer. Scroll down to the bottom of the post for the short answer.

Once upon a time, back in the late Middle Ages, coins were graded much the same everywhere, and on a very simple scale: Poor, Fair and Good. Since the only coins being collected back then were ancients, this scale was sufficient, and the words meant pretty much what they mean in everyday conversation: a coin in Good condition was actually pretty good, given that it had been dug up after being buried for a thousand years.

As coin collecting became more popular and modern coins began to be collected, additional grades beyond "Good" had to be invented, especially with the introduction of modern machinery capable of creating coins of very high quality (just like new words to describe the purity of olive oil had to be invented as oil refining and filtering technologies advanced). This we acquired Fine, Very Fine and, early in the 20th century, Extremely Fine. Then there was Uncirculated, to describe a coin in mint-fresh condition. "AU" or "aUnc" is a relatively modern invention.

Up until at least the mid-20th century, condition was not a particularly significant factor in assigning a value to a coin; rarity was much more important. The Sheldon scale was invented in 1949 as a simplified way to convert condition-to-value for a given coin: a VF-20 coin was worth one-third the price of an MS-60 coin, no matter what the coin actually was. This kept the Sheldon catalogue relatively uncluttered, since only one price was required to be listed for each type and variety: the theoretical "basal-state" (BS-1) price. Prices for higher grades could be calculated just by multiplying the BS price by the Sheldon number for the grade.

Time marched on, and the demand for coins in the "best possible grade" grew. Prices for Unc coins escalated far beyond the usefulness of the Sheldon scale to calculate value. Thus, we have the complicated system of grading, with multiple levels, adjectives, and words that seem to mean the opposite of their normal everyday sense - compared to a coin in aUnc condition, a coin in Good condition is actually rather awful.

From now we can more clearly see a curious effect: "grade creep", also known as "gradeflation" - which is the main reason why the Americans have a much slacker grading standard than ours. The definitions of what qualifies a coin as "Good" or "Very Fine" has changed over time, and have gotten worse. As I said, originally a coin in Good was in pretty good nick.

Gradeflation happens at different rates in different places; it is faster where there has a high market demand for high-grade coins for a longer period. If the supply isn't meeting the demand, the grading standards are slackened slightly, to allow for increasing numbers of coins to reach the threshold for each grade. It's an evolutionary (or, more precisely, a devolutionary) process; tiny changes made over a long time period. Gradeflation has been more rampant in America than it has here in Australia, because of the higher collector demand generally which has meant that high-grade coins have been in demand there for longer.

Don't think the Australian standard of grading has been immune to gradeflation, either. Today, the British grading standard is even tougher than ours; an American AU-55 ought to make an Australian EF, but would only rate a British gVF. But back when we were part of the British Empire, our grading standards were the same. And if you want to see how far our grading standards have slipped since the "good old days", grab a copy of an old grading guide from the 1960s. The book "Collecting Australian Coins" by Tom Hanley and Bill James came out in 1966, just after decimalization. Listen to these lines from the grading guide for the reverse of George V silver coinage, contained therein (emphasis mine):


Only a tiny fraction of coins from mint rolls qualify as Uncirculated? Mint bag marks only visible under magnification count as "wear"? Now that's a harsh standard, harsher even than the current British standard. Yet it's the standard many of our old-time collectors (and dealers) grew up with, and it's the standard the price guides from the 1960s would have used.

So, the short answer: America has had more gradeflation than us.

Therein lies the basis of the problem.
They get slabbed and then over graded ( as far as Aussies are concerned ) Thus inflating the price of the coins to a large degree.
IMHO the only people that get coins slabbed here are taking advantage of this over grading phenomenon to artificially increase the value of a coin they want to sell.
It may be legal and it may just be good sales practice, It could also be considered as dishonesty as well.
I do not think that I am alone in thinking the Sheldon grading system is being abused in this way.
Just my take on this

Learn to grade in what standards are commonly used and understand how they relate. There's one thing that is constant, and that's change and you can rant and rave all you like, if different standards are being used you better understand them or you'll be left behind.

The Sheldon Scale is unknown outside of North America. The slabbing companies are American-based and the American graders they employ are attempting to grade foreign coins using a grading system that is alien to the native collectors in the countries that the coins come from. And that is the basis for the argument here in this thread.

If you want an illustration of the countries that the Sheldon scale is widely used in, pick up a Krause world coin catalogue. The American and Canadian listings are in Sheldon, everywhere else... nope.


No. There have been a few startup attempts in the past decade or so but none have really gotten off the ground. There just isn't the demand for slabbing here yet from collectors, and the startups have all been started up by coin dealers, so there's been little incentive for other coin dealers to have their coins judged by one of their competitors.


And here is what many of the "anti-Sheldon camp" object to. How are those new to the hobby supposed to get their heads around this? Learning to grade coins is hard enough without learning two different systems that use the same words to mean different things.

A country that forced all new arrivals to learn two different and contradictory languages would probably not have many willing immigrants or tourists.


Unfortunately, you can't ignore them. If you ask any of the graders of Slabland to please omit the alphabetic designation and just put the Sheldon number on the slab, will they do it? No, they won't. And the simple fact is that the "EF" in "EF-40" is indeed short for Extremely Fine. Saying that "EF-40" really means "Very Fine" will just confuse everybody, especially the people who are just starting to learn to grade.