Looking For General Information On Coin Grading

http://coinsandcanada.com/coins-grading.php
This site will give you a start.
There are also numerous books including
any Charlton Canadian Coins catalogue that has
an outline on coin grading at the front of the book.
Coin grading is very subjective though, just look at the variation in
grading in some of the posts on this thread.

To answer your question, any circulated coin cannot be graded MS.

Thank you for the advice! This brings me into my next question, how do you get a mint state coin? If they're found in uncirculated sets eyre considered PL sets and not an MS grade. Especially old coins, how are they kept to be a mint grade if they were never in circulation?

From the very day that old coin left the bank, it would still be in mint grade because it was never spent. For those who weren't actual coin collectors or coin dealers at the time, mint coins or rolls of new coin may have originally stashed away as a means of savings or for emergencies because back then an accumulation of coins had spending power and not everyone trusted keeping all their money in a bank. By the 60s, at the height of coin collecting as a hobby, those coins were worth far more than face value.

Of course this was in the days before online transactions and the usage of coin was a much bigger part of people's everyday lives.

Edit to add: Something that might be confusing to new collectors......just because a new looking coin comes from a bank roll does not automatically deem it to be MS. It's not MS if found in a roll amongst assorted years of coin because obviously it has been circulated and already passed through countless fingers. But banks do (sometimes) receive rolls of newly minted coin - the same year, never circulated - referred to as "a mint roll".

You probably can't from pictures, one must have the coin 'in hand' to give a reasonable grade.

Somehow I missed this, but thanks!

Now, back to the OP's topic lol