Differences Between PCGS And Australian Grades

Interesting. Thanks for your contribution.

An excellent overview for the most part, but I would take issue with one of your points.


But PCGS is a market grader. In the name of "eye appeal", they do grade different coins differently, over and above their "technical grade", depending on the perceived market value of the coin. Although PCGS founder David Hall is on the record as disliking the term for semantic reasons, they say right here on their glossary page that market grading is what they actually do.

If PCGS don't employ market grading for Australian coins, it's simply because they're not familiar enough with the Australian market to do it properly. But it is certainly employed in the various American coinage series which they grade.

Interesting, my comments are based on my experience with how they grade Australian coins. While they do factor in eye appeal, they don't employ different standards for different series though as you said this is probably because they're not familiar with the various standards employed here. The same could possibly be true about my comments on strike. I don't think they will be employing market grading in Australia because our market was still fairly immature when they entered, grading standards really weren't well defined for anything other than Geo V issues so their grading standards became the standard here fairly quickly.

Personally I'd hope they never start using market grading on Australian coins, my views on it are the same as David's. One of thing aspects I like about PCGS grading in Australia is their strict consistency. It makes it so easy for new collectors to learn to grade if a single standard is consistently applied.