Grading is definitely an imperfect art. Sometimes I wonder how much of an artist that I am.

I've gone back and forth with my successes and failures. Sometimes I do very well and sometimes I feel like I couldn't get a coin to grade if my life depended on it.

I've submitted quite a few coins for crossovers from several grading companies with only two successes. One was an ANACS coin that didn't upgrade but it did cross. The other wasn't even a crossover--it was a designation review for a full steps war nickel. I've had both ANACS and PCGS graded coins come back, both of which were improperly cleaned or artificially toned.

It seems that my greatest successes have been with buying raw coins and getting them graded. I don't know--maybe it's that I tend to let my guard down a little when I look at a Third Party professionally graded coin. After all they are the ones that do this for a living. They grade more coins in a month that I could ever hope to own. It just gets frustrating, not to mention expensive, when you find out that the coin that you just purchased has been altered in some unsavory way. But I'm a gambler as well as a glutton for punishment. I just purchased an ANACS graded MS 61 1934-S Peace Dollar and guess what I'm going to do with it I'll probably send it out the beginning of next week. Lets see what happens.

In fact, due to my many disappointments, I recently began a new Signature Set on just this subject. It's only got three coins in it right now but give it time, I'll have more coins body bagged sooner or later. (I've gotten rid of most of my failures until now) After they get Bagged I'll send them to NCS and have them slab them and then I will put them in my set. It will be a little expensive but maybe someone else will be able to get something out of my failures.

This one is one my successes. It's a coin that I have wanted since I first saw one when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I bought it raw. It was graded an MS 62--I took one look at it and knew that it was better than that. I was extremely surprised when I found out that it graded out as an MS 65. I was only hoping for an MS 64 at best. That just goes back to my opening remark. Sometimes I wonder how much of an artist that I really am.

Mike

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