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Posted 05/17/2009 9:53 pm
intentcity3: Yes the USA uses a very different grading system from that used in Australia, although I am seeing the American system make inroads into Australia. The US (Sheldon) system grades coins on a scale from 1 to 70 although in practice fewer than half of those numbers are actually used. The numbers are invariably preceded by a prefix such as the familiar VF and EF. MS is a Sheldon prefix which means "mint state" so the top end you have MS60 to MS70, below that is AU50-AU59, EF40-EF49 and so on. The grades are very sparse at the lower end and very dense at the top end.
Generally speaking it doesn't matter so long as you realise that the systems are radically different and you do not mistake a Sheldon EF for an Australian EF. The Sheldon system introduced an entire grade between UNC (MS) and EF so the Sheldon AU corresponds roughly to EF and that pushes EF down to the top end of VF and so on all the way down the scale. Furthermore, MS doesn't really correspond to UNC. The lowest MS (MS60) is really aUNC. As things go up from there they get complicated. UNC, CHU and GEM are all covered within the MS range.
The popular catalogues in Australia (McDonalds, Renniks) also have AU as a separate grade but dealers probably don't use those guides anyway.
An approximate correspondence between Sheldon and Australian would be something like this:
FDC MS70
GEM MS67
CHU MS64
UNC MS62
aUNC MS60
gEF AU58
EF AU55
aEF AU53
gVF EF45
VF EF50
aVF VF45
I just compiled that table as a quick exercise by looking at the PCGS "Official Guide to Coin Grading and Counterfeit Detection" and it represents my judgement as to how the grades correspond. If I were to spend more time then I might make a slightly different table so feel free to disagree.
Generally speaking it doesn't matter so long as you realise that the systems are radically different and you do not mistake a Sheldon EF for an Australian EF. The Sheldon system introduced an entire grade between UNC (MS) and EF so the Sheldon AU corresponds roughly to EF and that pushes EF down to the top end of VF and so on all the way down the scale. Furthermore, MS doesn't really correspond to UNC. The lowest MS (MS60) is really aUNC. As things go up from there they get complicated. UNC, CHU and GEM are all covered within the MS range.
The popular catalogues in Australia (McDonalds, Renniks) also have AU as a separate grade but dealers probably don't use those guides anyway.
An approximate correspondence between Sheldon and Australian would be something like this:
FDC MS70
GEM MS67
CHU MS64
UNC MS62
aUNC MS60
gEF AU58
EF AU55
aEF AU53
gVF EF45
VF EF50
aVF VF45
I just compiled that table as a quick exercise by looking at the PCGS "Official Guide to Coin Grading and Counterfeit Detection" and it represents my judgement as to how the grades correspond. If I were to spend more time then I might make a slightly different table so feel free to disagree.
