Coin Collecting Club

Hi,

 

This is my first guide to ArticlesBase about grading a milled coin.

 
FDC Fleur-De-Coin This is an absolutely flawless coin with no scratches or wear whatsoever.

 

UNC Uncirculated In brand-new condition. Royal Mint issue coins in this condition. This grade is almost 100%.

 

EF Extremely fine Scratches and/or wear can not be detected easily without a close look at a coin in EF grade.

 

VF Very fine Higher surfaces on coin will be worn but still having a lot of detail overall.

 

F Fine Higher surfaces on coin will be worn away but lower surfaces will still be \”sharp\” e.g the Hair or Moustache.

 

Fair Very worn and scratches will probably be on a Fair graded coin but letters will all be easily readable.

 

Poor Very worn and scratches will be easily seen. Some letters will have worn away also on a poor coin.

 

A coin may not be exactly Fine for example. If it was worse than Fine but not Fair it could be \”Almost Fine\” but if it was better than Fine but not Very Fine it would be \”Almost Very Fine\” or \”good Fine\”.

 

I hope this guide was useful to you and you have now learned the basics of grading a milled coin but learning to professionally grade a coin comes with years of experience. If you would like to view my online coin shop feel free: Click here to visit my website.

 

Also if you have a question about UK coins or my website I may be able to help. Email me here: bairdcoins@googlemail.com

 

Thanks for reading.

Just what is coin grading? It is the practice of assessing a coin and assigning it a particular grade. As a collector of coins, you should never entirely trust coin grading services otherwise you could get thoroughly disappointed. Not all coin grading services are equal. They are not standardized, so you will find that there are some grading services that are inferior to others. There are some top coin grader out there, but they are far and between and so aren’t accessible to everyone who might want to solicit their services.
If you are willing and patient enough, you could teach yourself how to grade coins. This isn’t hard if you have the time to dedicate and the will to learn. Some people will learn from beginning to end, but you will find those people who will learn the basics in the beginning, enough for them to get by, and then learn the rest through experience. As I said the grading is not standardized, so there is no common standard that can be used to grade coins. What there are though are some accepted methods of grading, and this depends on some standards. This also means that the grade you assign to a coin depends on the scale used.

After a coin is graded, it carries the value assigned to that grade and different coins can fetch different prices even if they are in the same grade. Coin grading takes into account different factors such as luster, scratches, abrasions, even the wear and tear it has undergone. The unfortunate thing is you can find that your coin has been graded too low or too high, because different people will interpret differently. So you can end up paying too much or getting too little for it when you sell it.

Before I begin, I am not encouraging the use of PVC based products to store your coins. If you are going to use a PVC based product, ensure that it’s for the shortest amount of time possible.

With that said, plastic coin tubes are an alternate way for you to store your coins. It’s simple enough to describe. The tubes are plastic and you get the size that will fit the coins that you want to store. They come in different sizes.

These tubes are easy to use. All there is to it is that you load each coin into the tube until it’s full. This is not the way to go if you are the kind of person who wants to keep looking at your coins, because you have to keep taking them out of the tube. Remember that when you continuously handle your coins with your bare hands, you are aiding their degradation. So, this is a good mode of storage for those people who just want to store their coins. Coin tubes will help you save a lot of storage space because the coins are bundled in a compact space, as compared to when you put them in a display case or a coin album.

Another advantage of these tubes is that when you pack your coins in them, they are so compact that there is absolutely no room for movement. This means your coins will not rub against each other, thus preventing the risk of scratches and abrasions.

Have you ever gone to play your favourite music CD, or gone to watch your favourite DVD film, only to find that it no longer plays all the way through?

So you take the disc out of the machine give it a wipe with a clean cloth, and whist doing so, you notice a scratch right across the surface and think to yourself, how did that get there?

There was a time when a scratched disc was no good to anyone, and the only option was to throw it in the rubbish bin and buy a new one.

Well luckily there is now a cheaper option. Instead of throwing your expensive discs away every time they get scratched, you can now get them professionally repaired.

Now I’m not talking about those cheap repair kits that you can buy from the local market or like the ones scattered across the internet that promise miracles for only £9.99. I’m talking about a professional service which uses professional high tech equipment to permanently remove scratches from your expensive collection of CDs, DVDs and console games.

Some of these services are now available online, such as www.cdfix.co.uk which offers a postal disc repair service via their website. You simply order how many discs you need repairing online, then post the discs off to the address provided, and sit back and wait for them to return looking like new. The best thing is, if they cannot repair your disc for whatever reason they simply refund your money and return the disc to you.

So forget those cheap repair kits, CD repair liquids and disc repair gadgets that can actually cause more harm than good. Instead try a professional CD repair service to restore your CD or DVD collection.

Coin collection is a wondeful hobby. While some coin collectors enjoy hunting for rare coins, others take it as an investment to make money out of it. As a coin collector if you know something about the grading and evaluation of coins, you will have a better idea about what others may be looking for.

Types of coin collectors

Normally coin collectors collect only some specific type of coins so as to add value to their collection and also to make it interesting to the buyers. Some other collectors do it only for personal satisfaction and are more interested in the uniqueness of coins. Series coin collectors are interested in coin series with yearly marks and design changes. They will not like to miss any coin of their series. The type collectors are people interested in the series of coins which have been changing.

There are ancient coin collectors: these are people interested in coins of the period spanning 650 BC to 450 AD. During this period coins were supposed to be invented and used. These coins are made of bronze, silver or gold. The Romans ruled in this period and these coins feature Roman emperors, their towns and gods, etc.

Token collectors collect tokens which were used in place of the actual currency when the coins were in shortage. Though these tokens might not have been authorized by the government, they were in use in place of the local currency.

Grading of Coins

Coins can also be graded for evaluation purposes. The condition of the coin decides its grading and that in turn will govern its price. It will be useful if a coin collector knows grading coins so that he can safeguard himself from cheating.

The term “uncirculated coins” refers to coins which show no wear or tear, they are also refered to as being “in mint condition”. The MS (mint state) grading is determined by the coin’s shine, visible contact marks or hair lines scratches, and the overall look. The MS grading ranges from MS-60 (implying dull luster) to MS-70 (meaning flawless). While the grade, MS-70, is unachieveable, coins with grades MS-65 or higher will fetch good prices.

The circulated coins are graded less harshly — amount of scratches or dirt on the coins with years of use are ignored while grading. Instead, the quality of physical appearance such as luster of the coin, visibility of design elements, letters and numerals, etc., determine the grade of the coin. Their worth is indicated by the following grades:

AU (about “uncirculated”), EF (extremely fine), VF (very fine), F (fine), VG (very good), G (good), AG (about good), F-2 (fair) and as

P (poor).

Since, these coins had been in circulation unlike the uncirculated coins which were never used, the grading of circulated coins do not drastically affect their value. This is a useful situation for those who need them merely to complete their collection.

The basic laws of economics applies to the world of coins too. The price of a particular coin will also be governed by the usual demand-supply situation, disregarding the grade of the coin. The low supply coins with heavy demand will be expensive compared to those in good supply.

It is the coin dealers who establish the demand, and hence the coins’ worth, by comparing the number of buyers and sellers. As a coin becomes hard to find, the coin dealers raises its price, and more people come forward to sell it.

You must know that grading and pricing of coins usually require a good deal of experience. While there are plenty of tips and guide books about grading and coin evaluations, it is the professional coin dealers who have the final word on the coins’ worth. It may be a good exercise that you grade and evaluate your coins yourself and then talk to some professional dealers to find out why your results are different from theirs.

While the investment and profit part will be always there in coin collections, it can certainly be made to be a joyful hobby. Besides knowing a thing or two about grading will be always useful so that no one can exploit your ignorance.