This basic information will be beneficial to persons who want to learn about the grading standards published by the American Numismatic Association (A.N.A.)
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We can't evaluate your coins over the telephone because we can't see them. However, you can go a long way toward evaluating your own coins using methods described in this section. The official book shown on the left is the basis for grading and assessing coin values. There is a similar book published in most countries of the world.
Since you may not have a powerful magnifying lens or microscope normally used during a formal value assessment, still, as a home collector you might use a digital camera and color printer to greatly enlarge and print color copies of your coins. This is a way to exagerate any of the flaws or perfections that your coins may have. The coins on the left side of this page were chosen to illustrate the types of factors that influence the value of your coins.
There are 70 grades of quality that can be assigned to any coin plus additional annotations that produce a final statement of quality. Formal written assessments, however, do not hold true for all time. Written assessments are sometimes required for purposes of insurance, wills, and various buying or selling situations. However, over time, a coin may take on the color of other coins that might surround it - copper coins can impart false colors to nearby coins for example, and inconsiderate handling in storage bags or moldy briefcases stored in damp areas for years can produce changes that could require periodic new written appraisals.
The A.N.A. Grading Standards book provides helpful explanations of the grading factors for lay-persons who wish to evaluate coins informally.
What determines the value of your coins today? The price of gold or silver has almost no influence. There are three primary factors: 1/ How scarce is the coin? 2/ What price is listed in the monthly price lists in the Numismatic magazines and grading sheets available to coin dealers? This reflects current public demand for the coin 3/ What's the quality of your coin? Within a single coin like the Peace Silver Dollars pictured to the left on this page, the selling price may vary from $10 to $1,500.
For your own reassurance regarding the coins you own, consider bringing them to one of our coin stores for a free evaluation (we may offer to buy them) or to any other coin store of your choice. When vacationing and travelling through the mid-west, bring your coins and stop by to visit either of our stores one hour West of Chicago.
Regarding scarcity of a coin, consider how this factor changes over time. The US mint, for example struck a finite number of these Silver Peace Dollars between 1921 and 1935. The price on this coin in perfect mint condition may have been (for example) $400 in 1975 given its scaracity at that time. But new coin collectors enter the scene every day, initiating their new collections.
Some of these new-comers are collecting Silver Peace Dollars - causing it to gradually become more rare every passing year. Being more difficult to obtain, it will gradually be listed at ever higher prices. Therefore the value of popular coins tends to increase gradually over time. If everyone stopped collecting at the same time, values would diminish to nothing because value depends on public demand and coin popularity.
Fortunately rare coins and currencies are understood to be long-term investments, tangible, and capable of being passed via wills and trusts on to family or friends. Like a savings account, a collection can easily be cashed out at any time. Our Fox Valley Coin stores are in a buying mode most of the time. Visit or call us to describe your collection and arrange to bring it in for expert evaluation.
Since you may not have a powerful magnifying lens or microscope normally used during a formal value assessment, still, as a home collector you might use a digital camera and color printer to greatly enlarge and print color copies of your coins. This is a way to exagerate any of the flaws or perfections that your coins may have. The coins on the left side of this page were chosen to illustrate the types of factors that influence the value of your coins.
There are 70 grades of quality that can be assigned to any coin plus additional annotations that produce a final statement of quality. Formal written assessments, however, do not hold true for all time. Written assessments are sometimes required for purposes of insurance, wills, and various buying or selling situations. However, over time, a coin may take on the color of other coins that might surround it - copper coins can impart false colors to nearby coins for example, and inconsiderate handling in storage bags or moldy briefcases stored in damp areas for years can produce changes that could require periodic new written appraisals.
The A.N.A. Grading Standards book provides helpful explanations of the grading factors for lay-persons who wish to evaluate coins informally.
What determines the value of your coins today? The price of gold or silver has almost no influence. There are three primary factors: 1/ How scarce is the coin? 2/ What price is listed in the monthly price lists in the Numismatic magazines and grading sheets available to coin dealers? This reflects current public demand for the coin 3/ What's the quality of your coin? Within a single coin like the Peace Silver Dollars pictured to the left on this page, the selling price may vary from $10 to $1,500.
For your own reassurance regarding the coins you own, consider bringing them to one of our coin stores for a free evaluation (we may offer to buy them) or to any other coin store of your choice. When vacationing and travelling through the mid-west, bring your coins and stop by to visit either of our stores one hour West of Chicago.
Regarding scarcity of a coin, consider how this factor changes over time. The US mint, for example struck a finite number of these Silver Peace Dollars between 1921 and 1935. The price on this coin in perfect mint condition may have been (for example) $400 in 1975 given its scaracity at that time. But new coin collectors enter the scene every day, initiating their new collections.
Some of these new-comers are collecting Silver Peace Dollars - causing it to gradually become more rare every passing year. Being more difficult to obtain, it will gradually be listed at ever higher prices. Therefore the value of popular coins tends to increase gradually over time. If everyone stopped collecting at the same time, values would diminish to nothing because value depends on public demand and coin popularity.
Fortunately rare coins and currencies are understood to be long-term investments, tangible, and capable of being passed via wills and trusts on to family or friends. Like a savings account, a collection can easily be cashed out at any time. Our Fox Valley Coin stores are in a buying mode most of the time. Visit or call us to describe your collection and arrange to bring it in for expert evaluation.
Grading Abbreviations - Explained in the Standards Book:
MS-60 to 70: Uncirculated or Mint State
AU-58: About Uncirculated - Very Choice
AU-50: About Uncirculated - Choice
EF-45: Extremely Fine - Choice
EF-40: Extremely Fine
VF-30: Choice Very Fine
VF-20: Very Fine
F-12: Fine
VG-8: Very Good
G-4: Good
AG-3 About Good
Mint State coins (never circulated) are evaluated with additional criteria:
LUSTER: The way light reflects from the microscopic flow of lines
COLOR: A combination of natural hue of the struck metal and any toning
DETRACTING MARKS: Caused by handling, packaging, tight plastic holders, fingerprints
CLEANING-MISHANDLING: damage from polishing, rubbing, and "cabinet friction"
EYE APPEAL: Absence of finger marks, carbon streaks, original blank plate defects, striking defects, vinyl damage, cleaning marks, corrosion marks, whixxing-wire brush polishing - and more.
Some Interesting Details from the Grading Book Above:
A "Planchet" is a flat rolled strip of gold or silver from which a coin will be struck. Between 1800 and 1920, each Planchet had to legally weigh an exact amount in ounces. Once a coin is struck weight cannot be added, so the practice was to create the square Planchets with a slight overweight. Just before striking the coin, it would be weighed and if overweight, a flat file would be manually pulled across the flat surface to reduce the silver to a final exact weight. Normally the striking process would remove all evidence of these so-called "adjustment marks." However, a few coins do show the parallel scratchings of those manual adjustments and they are a detraction from "eye-appeal." Remember, these are Mint grade coins - they have never been circulated. So these markings are not scratches from handling, but marks from the minting process.
Also of interest is the handling of new coins prior to 1920. Both the Philadelphia mint and the Carson City Mint in Nevada struck coins for commercial purposes only with no regard for numismatic collectors. Productivity was the focus.
As coins were struck by the machines, they were ejected into a metal box. From there they were dumped into a storage bin. When full they were carted to another area of the mint and loaded into a counting machine which ran at high speed. Then they were put into large cloth bags and stored, awaiting shipment. No attempt was made to preserve them for future collectors.
Today the term "bag marks" refers to nicks, cuts, and contact marks that occurred during handling and shipping from the mint to banks via stage coach and horseback. Double Eagle coins struck in Carson City Nevada were transported in larger bags than Philadelphia, and they have notoriously characteristic "bag marks" even if the coins were never circulated.
The first attempt to standardize the grading process was 1958 when Brown and Dunn published "A Guide to the Grading of United States Coins. Later in 1978 the American Numismatic Association Board of Govenors published the first ANA Official Grading Standards book with periodic updates and re-publications. By resolution the ANA Board adopted this resolution:
"Grading is an art and not an exact science. More precisely, grading is a matter of opinion. Differences of opinion may occur among graders as to a particular coin, and any grader could conceivably change his interpretation of the grading standards over the years."
MS-60 to 70: Uncirculated or Mint State
AU-58: About Uncirculated - Very Choice
AU-50: About Uncirculated - Choice
EF-45: Extremely Fine - Choice
EF-40: Extremely Fine
VF-30: Choice Very Fine
VF-20: Very Fine
F-12: Fine
VG-8: Very Good
G-4: Good
AG-3 About Good
Mint State coins (never circulated) are evaluated with additional criteria:
LUSTER: The way light reflects from the microscopic flow of lines
COLOR: A combination of natural hue of the struck metal and any toning
DETRACTING MARKS: Caused by handling, packaging, tight plastic holders, fingerprints
CLEANING-MISHANDLING: damage from polishing, rubbing, and "cabinet friction"
EYE APPEAL: Absence of finger marks, carbon streaks, original blank plate defects, striking defects, vinyl damage, cleaning marks, corrosion marks, whixxing-wire brush polishing - and more.
Some Interesting Details from the Grading Book Above:
A "Planchet" is a flat rolled strip of gold or silver from which a coin will be struck. Between 1800 and 1920, each Planchet had to legally weigh an exact amount in ounces. Once a coin is struck weight cannot be added, so the practice was to create the square Planchets with a slight overweight. Just before striking the coin, it would be weighed and if overweight, a flat file would be manually pulled across the flat surface to reduce the silver to a final exact weight. Normally the striking process would remove all evidence of these so-called "adjustment marks." However, a few coins do show the parallel scratchings of those manual adjustments and they are a detraction from "eye-appeal." Remember, these are Mint grade coins - they have never been circulated. So these markings are not scratches from handling, but marks from the minting process.
Also of interest is the handling of new coins prior to 1920. Both the Philadelphia mint and the Carson City Mint in Nevada struck coins for commercial purposes only with no regard for numismatic collectors. Productivity was the focus.
As coins were struck by the machines, they were ejected into a metal box. From there they were dumped into a storage bin. When full they were carted to another area of the mint and loaded into a counting machine which ran at high speed. Then they were put into large cloth bags and stored, awaiting shipment. No attempt was made to preserve them for future collectors.
Today the term "bag marks" refers to nicks, cuts, and contact marks that occurred during handling and shipping from the mint to banks via stage coach and horseback. Double Eagle coins struck in Carson City Nevada were transported in larger bags than Philadelphia, and they have notoriously characteristic "bag marks" even if the coins were never circulated.
The first attempt to standardize the grading process was 1958 when Brown and Dunn published "A Guide to the Grading of United States Coins. Later in 1978 the American Numismatic Association Board of Govenors published the first ANA Official Grading Standards book with periodic updates and re-publications. By resolution the ANA Board adopted this resolution:
"Grading is an art and not an exact science. More precisely, grading is a matter of opinion. Differences of opinion may occur among graders as to a particular coin, and any grader could conceivably change his interpretation of the grading standards over the years."
ABOVE: Note the attempted cleaning flaws in front of the nose. Cleaning rarely improves value and may promote eventual color change. Observe scuff marks behind the hair. This coin was in circulation - note markings on neck. See also flawed discoloration above the hair-bun. This silver dollar appears to be tinted with a tan color, but untrue - the coloring was probably caused by an incadescent light bulb which the camera recorded faithfully. Use hallogen lamps when photographing, or blue-sky sunlight.
ABOVE: Since silver is relatively soft, people would bite coins to see if they were really silver. The diagonal mark above the V in TRVST is probably a tooth mark. As a circulated coin, this coin collected considerable oxidation. Silver cleaner, if applied would reveal permanent deterioration beneath the darkened areas, and attempts to wipe it off would leave cloth wiping marks - seen in the first coin above. Value is greatly diminished.
ABOVE: A heavy object was dropped on this coin creating two deep dents in the left rim-side. Another depression is pressed into the last digit of the date. Miss Liberty has a deep poc mark on her nose. There is corrosion around the top rim and under the neck. Value is considerably diminished.
LEFT COIN: Miss Liberty appears to be lost in a mire of dirt and corrosion. However, given the date on the coin, and the rarity of this coin, it has value even though circulation and storage was damaging. The silver in the coin is worth at least $6.00, but the scarcity of this coin places its value at about $300.00 at the time of this writing. The silver has attracted copper colors from nearby coins during storage. Its original beauty can never be restored.
Copyright © 2005 Fox Valley Coins, Inc. All Rights Reserved. E-mail:Coins@FoxValleyCoins.biz
A wide variety of services and products is provided by Fox Valley Coins.
The numismatic experts specialize in evaluating and buying American Eagle gold coins, U.S. currencies, foreign currencies, purchases of rare coins, gold appraisals and pricing of collections. We provide silver coin appraisals, vast hoard appraisals, sales of commemorative coins, and hosting of special coin auction events. These sometimes include periodic antiques and collectibles auctions every 60 days. An absentee bidder's form is included on this web site. Also we organize and host rare coin auctions including gold, silver, and commemorative coins. Rare currencies and bills are also included in these auctions. Antique collectibles attract large crowds during the preview days and on the day of the auction. We appraise antiques and coin collections as shown on this web site.
Naperville Store: (630) 305-0100 Aurora Store: (630) 820-2800
A wide variety of services and products is provided by Fox Valley Coins.
The numismatic experts specialize in evaluating and buying American Eagle gold coins, U.S. currencies, foreign currencies, purchases of rare coins, gold appraisals and pricing of collections. We provide silver coin appraisals, vast hoard appraisals, sales of commemorative coins, and hosting of special coin auction events. These sometimes include periodic antiques and collectibles auctions every 60 days. An absentee bidder's form is included on this web site. Also we organize and host rare coin auctions including gold, silver, and commemorative coins. Rare currencies and bills are also included in these auctions. Antique collectibles attract large crowds during the preview days and on the day of the auction. We appraise antiques and coin collections as shown on this web site.
Naperville Store: (630) 305-0100 Aurora Store: (630) 820-2800