How To Grade US Coins Halperin - Nci Grading Guild

In a distant time Jim Halprin was considered one of the very best graders alive (pre TPG comapnies) he even tried his hand at starting his own TPG (NCI and NCI Photoproof). New England Coin Galleries always had some of the nicest coins around when I started in numismatics. After Steve Ivy convinced Jim to leave NEG for Steve Ivy rare coins and team up doing coin auctions, they formed a little company called Heritage. Needless to say he did okay for himself.

The book is quite out of date, though worth having in a library if you collect coin books like I do, it should be found cheap, I paid under a dollar for my copy. It's a book that is outdated and I find relegated to the storage unit over the past several years.

That aside, the foundations Jim imparts throughout this book are all very true today and it's a book worth reading at least once. It does give good solid insights on grading from the mind of one of the best ever.

There are many books on grading, Photograde is still the standard for circulated US coinage and superseded by the PCGS website of the same name for free.

"The Official Guide to Coin Grading and Counterfeit Detection" is a much more current book, in it's second edition, though I prefer the 1st edition myself.

The Official ANA guide to grading US coins is the bible on the subject. Still nothing beats hands on mentoring and study - attend an ANA Summer Seminar of two or three or even more on the subject. That is the single thing I attribute to me becoming the grader I am today. I attended 5 courses over the years specifically dedicated to Counterfeit Detection and grading. The ANA usually offers these courses in shorter 3 day or even 1 day seminars around the country to coincide with various ANA coin shows, allowing those that can't travel to their headquarters in Colorado Springs. Worth looking into if you can.

I didn't even know there was a paperback version, I've only seen this book hardbound. Mine has a different look to the linked photos you shared. My copy looks like this:



I really like how Jim shows the areas most likely to have wear on each series. The use of color overlays helped a lot back in the days when this first came out, especially over the other books like the ANA Grading guide then only had line drawings and no photos, the even older book by Brown & Dunn 1960 era was nowhere near the level of Jim's book. The ANA Grading guide got photos around 3rd or 4th edition if memory serves me right, and not full color until at least the 6th edition.

There was also a little known book by Dr. Richard Bagg on grading, Dr. Bagg was with Bowers & Ruddy, later Bowers & Merena. Interesting stuff for historical changes in how coins were graded. Note all these were reprints from old copies of the ANA publication the Numismatist magazine.