Is AU-58 The Smart Choice For Sets?

From my perspective, you may be putting the cart before the horse. I would say pick the series you want to collect first, and then discover just where the big price break is. For my world type collection, VF is the route to go. For Oriental cash coins, I'm not experienced enough to be picky. Morgan die study examples are being upgraded from MS63 and MS64 to 65 and 66.

I'd personally prefer a nice XF (or even VF) to either (not least because it's often several times cheaper), but if I had to choose from high grades, I'd choose AU58.

IIRC, in many cases (such as, IIRC, for some common-date Morgan dollars), there's nearly no premium from VF all the way up to the low MS grades, but better examples than that cost more. In this case, AU58 is definitely the way to go - at least, assuming you can find any.

That said, I don't think I have a single slabbed coin of any grade in my collection yet (for the simple reason that coins worth less than $20 or so are hardly ever slabbed, and I pretty much never buy any coins for more than about $15), and if I do end up getting one, it will probably be MS (very possibly MS63), because non-MS slabs of lower-value coins are significantly rarer.

I have a set of SLQs I am completing in AU-58. That series was notorious back before slabs as minor wear being discounted as stacking or slide friction when selling as MS-63 and being called wear when dealer's would buy it as AU-58. I started collecting AU-58s as I figured no one is going to say it isn't AU-58. I now see tons of slabbed MS-63's in that series with obvious wear. I think the market has decided that MS coins do not go from MS-65 to AU-58 with the slightest friction and have started pricing them and grading them on a continuum from AU55 - MS-65 with wear being just one component of overall grade. Given that as well as the price jumps between grades, I think AU-58 is a great choice.

I think the premium put on the AU-58 grade isn't worth it. However most times an AU-58 is far more pleasing than any MS-60 through 62. I like uncleaned original mid AU grades such as the coin below. While this coin has minimal wear, I wouldn't call it AU-58 due to lack of luster.

I never look at a grade. I buy the best I can find and constantly update and upgrade all my Albums.

Despite that 'professional' grading, like the ones done at third party graders, might be of relatively consistent quality, a coin grade is still highly subjective. This is known in 'the community' and it's why a lot of coins get resubmitted in hopes to get a more favorable grade, for example. To me, coin grading should be taken as someone's piece of advise, not as determining and definitive. For raw coins, it's even more subjective. Anyone can basically put any grade on any coin, no matter how unlikely it may look. Just add 'choice' to your description and tah-daa! any questions are solved at once. Especially dealers (or sellers on ebay) may sometimes want to sell their coins in a bit higher grade than a neutral grader would give them. Again, it's a subjective thing.

As such, I'd like to advise you to just buy the coins you like and you find interesting, and don't get stuck too much on grades. Unless you wish to start collecting specific TPG graded sets of a coin, of course. And remember that there are many other coin grading systems out there, a lot of them much, much less specific than this one.

And then one rhetorical question: what's the best coin? Is a higher grade automatically a better coin? What with people who collect lowballs? Or toned coins?

That doesn't surprise me in the least, Most AU58 coins are far more easy on the eyes than their MS60-62 counterparts