Mintstate Coins

Pretty good explanation Thisisfun. Point to clarify though, you will never see a coin graded MS12. 12 falls into the Fine range of the Sheldon Scale. Also, MS does stand fro Mint State.

Here is a chart, it is a bit tongue-in-cheek but non the less true.

some coins where not made in proof I was also looking at the coin prices and ms 65 coins are worth more then proof 65 coins

Whoopsie, yep I goofed in my explanation . As amida17 pointed out, for the grade abbreviation the letters abbreviate the alpha description (F for Fine, VG for Very Good, etc and MS is for MS which is 60-70).

What confused me when I first started looking at value charts is the designation 'MS'. In the PCGS charts, its the column just after the year/mint. What does that 'MS' mean, anyway? Is it Mint Strike? Can anyone clue me in?

That MS designation will change depending on what coin series you are looking at, it will always start with MS, coins struck for circulation, followed downwards on the date/mint mark for each coin in the series along with designations such as, for copper coinage, that would be color BN for Brown, RB for Red/Brown and RD for full Red, in coins like Morgan dollars there might be MS, PL, and DMPL for Mint State, Proof Like, Deep Mirror Proof like. Other series have various grading sub sections, full step Jefferson nickels, full bell lines on Franklin halves, full head on Standing Liberty quarters, etc.

The grades going across to the right will either be listed in the subcategories if possible and a dash showing no entry will appear across.

Follow the date and mint mark run down the page, You will note when a proof series is also available they will start the date list over but new designations will be PR or PF for Proof (specially prepared and minted coins for collectors, sometimes sold in sets). Again various designations of subcatagories will pop up on various coin series again, mostly for copper colors again and for cameo and deep cameo looks on all series.

This page http://www.pcgs.com/grades.html at PCGS describes all grades and designations they might use on a particular coin slabbed by them.

Out of almost 2 million submitted coins last year and less than 800 mistakes they bought back,say they have a pretty good track record of market grading today. http://www.pcgs.com/Statistics/

Hope that helps clear it up somewhat.

with both of you, actually most modern proof coins are made with specially prepared planchets and dies. The dies being the key, but the planchets are usually washed and tumbled with BB shot to polish them up before striking with specially prepared and polished dies, under multiple strikes and generally more pressure than normal circulation stirkes.