Grading Standards

This is best answered as a comparison between "strict grading" and "market grading." The original ANA standards still apply and are what we encourage when grading coins here, but it remains true that standards have slipped somewhat if not in all cases. These "market graded" coins were frequent enough in TPG slabs to have depressed the market at a given grade, leading to CAC and the resurgence of pricing of Beaned coins.

"Market grading" is, in my mind, a euphemism for "we managed to fool some of them all of the time." The advent of TPG's made numismatics more accessible to those uninterested in putting in the work to learn to grade, who then became who we're talking about when we admonish people to buy the coin and not the slab.

Everybody says they're using the usual standards, and they have said that all along. These days, having tightened up considerably in the last few years, the TPG's might even be able to say it accurately.

Thank you.