Question About MS Grading Standards (Ms68, Specifically)?

An abrasion or mark or bag mark has different levels of importance depending on the type of coin and the location of that mark.

The most easily understood is for that of the Morgan dollar, since it is known by almost all collectors to a certain degree. For the Morgan dollar, the cheek on the obverse is the area that would count the most against a coins grade, while the hair would count much less. Especially if the mark is in the same direction as the hair and not as distracting.

For the Lincoln Cent a mark on the obverse on Lincoln or in the fields would count against a grade more than the same size mark on the reverse on the columns, again, especially if the mark is going in the same direction as other design elements and is not as noticeable.

When you get to the more elevated grades, especially, it is more of an art that a science to decide on a final grade. An excellent book that goes through all of these details is:

Making the Grade (Third Edition) from Coin World. It takes each type design into consideration with color photos throughout that shows exactly the areas of most and least importance as far as marks are concerned. There is a "map" of each type with the areas that count the most and the least against a grade for each type in full color.

thats correct Pete

The given criteria are VERY generic. The main grading criteria for TPG's are eye appeal and luster, then reductions given for "distractions", i.e. field mars, hits, spots, etc.

Primary surfaces I define as the fields and device areas that the eye is immediately drawn to. The fields play a huge part in grading, personally, it's the FIRST thing I look at since a bulk of the eye appeal depends on clean fields.