I've been so busy working on my Signature set....

I always (well most of the time!) enjoy reading the journal entries of my fellow collectors. You get my mental juices flowing, which seems to be getting more difficult as I grow older.

A couple of observations are in order. From my perspective, whether a coin is toned or not does not effect its grade, only its eye appeal. I have some toned coins and some pure white and I have a hard time determining which I like better. See my 9/7/2008 journal entry, "To be (toned), or not to be (toned). I have a hard time believing that NGC or PCGS throws away the guidelines of coin grading because of some surface color. Toned coins do, however, command a premium because there appears to be increased demand. I think this is primarily the 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' syndrome.

As far as coin holders are concerned, I tend to like the PCGS holder better because you can see the whole coin. The new NGC holder is an improvement though, due to the fact that my pictures in the old holder had a shadow 9 times out of 10. It is disturbing to me that the prongs hide four areas of the rim and denticles.

Oh, well, maybe I'm just in an argumentative mood, playing devils' advocate so to speak. I find no fault with NGC and PCGS graders and would agree that it probably depends on the denomination or the series being graded.

My Signature Set is alive and well, even if my finances aren't. My family tree has been researched back to 1654 and I'm furiously trying to find nice coins to fill my slots. I'm finding that graded coins are hard to come by on these early dates. I am going to be 'enjoying the hunt' for a long time!

Happy collecting, all!

Dan