Coins vs. Cards -- Anyone here know the facts??

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Posted By: barrysloate

Here are some of the things that happened in the early days of coin grading: I believe grading began in the early 80's as none of the catalogs from the late 70's have graded coins. It gained pretty widespread popularity until a scandal broke. It became known that big time dealers were getting all sorts of preferential treatment, ranging from leniency on coins they submitted to having their orders expedited while the average collector waited weeks to receive his coins back. Then somewhere in the 90's, grading standards got so much stricter that coins graded before a certain cutoff point had to be resubmitted to be taken seriously in the market. Also, when grading started- using a scale from MS-1 to MS-70 (perfect coin) there were three levels of uncirculated; MS-60 (average), MS-65 (choice) and MS-70 (gem), or something like that. Today, there are 11 levels of uncirculated (MS-60, 61, 62...etc.) making the whole proces extremely complicated. I'm sure you can see some parallels with the coin and card markets. Today, virtually every rare coin is slabbed, save the legendary King of Siam 1834 Proof Set which is still housed in its original velvet case (it just traded recently for $8.5 million).