Grading Abbreviations That Have Been Outlined By The A.N.A:

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

The Difference Between A Single Grade Can Sometimes Mean

Thousands Of Dollars!

Know Your Coin Grades!

Mint State coins 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."