Wondering what grade (or CONDITION) your coins are in? This video shows you HOW TO GRADE coins at home YOURSELF!
In this video you will learn how to grade your coins accurately — and how to tell the grade of a coin using official ANA coin grading standards. So BEFORE you start grading coins yourself at home… watch this video!
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⚡TIMESTAMPS FROM THE VIDEO⚡
00:00 – How to grade coins yourself at home
00:10 – See what professionally graded coins look like
00:50 – ANA Grading Standards book explained
02:29 – See why this 1977 no mintmark penny is graded AU50
05:21 – Follow along as I grade this 1977-D penny AU55
05:50 – See why I graded this 1957-D penny EF45
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, this is Josh with The Fun Times Guide to Coins. And I want to discuss How To Grade Coins Yourself. In our hobby, a lot of people will go ahead and get their coins graded by third-party graders.
I’ve got a couple coins here for example to fit that bill. I’ve got a 1955 double die Lincoln cent that is graded AU-55 (or About Uncirculated 55) brown by Numismatic Guarantee Corporation (NGC). You can see… they go ahead and they encapsulate coins here in this tamper-evident plastic holder. The same for Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS). I’ve got 1972 double die Lincoln cent graded MS 54 red. Again, these are coins that have been graded by well-known reputable third-party graders.
But what do you do when you’ve got coins like these that are raw or unencapsulated that you want to grade? Well, you can go to a lot of different resources to figure out how to grade them. My personal favorite is to go to the official American Numismatic Association Grading Standards book. Now many editions of this book have been published over the years. I bought this one a few years ago, and it’s generally still a valid resource. I mean, what they may update over the course of years is they might add new coins have not been minted — they were not minted back when this book was made. Or occasionally there are some minor tweaks to the grading standards. But what I’m looking at here is not affected by any more recent editions. Although it wouldn’t hurt to get the most recent edition for yourself – so you’ve got the latest information.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to grade these Lincoln cents using the American Numismatic Association grading standards. As you see, the book contains both black and white and color photographs that show coins at different grading thresholds. For example, we’ve got here a Lincoln cent series wheat and a Lincoln memorial. These are all mint state grades — so uncirculated grades. Coins in these grades were never handled in circulation as money.
Over here we’ve got some coins that are in circulated condition. So, we see here we go from the best state of preservation on down to the most worn state of preservation. Look at that coin — that’s a good 4… What is that… a 19__? Oh gosh, 11 it looks like! (1911) And this is definitely a coin that’s seen some life. So what I’ve got here are some Lincoln cents that I’ve had in my collection for some time now, and I’d like to go ahead and try and prescribe a grade to these. And I can tell right away that this coin in my hand is well beyond… has well more detail than any of these coins here that are “good,” “very good,” or “fine.”
Let’s go ahead and go through the grading scale here. I’m thinking this is more like an EF45. As you can see, this coin has ample detail on the cheek, and the beard, on Lincoln’s coat (his suit). And I’m going to say… looking at these details here there’s some light wear on the cheekbone — on the temple. I think… See, looking at this here… Look at the beard detail. It’s evident here — as it is here in the picture. And there’s far more detail on my coin than on this XF (extremely fine) over here. This XF 40 or 45. Looking at the wear on the Lincoln Memorial, we see the same thing. This coin appears to be in a higher grade than this XF45. I would say looking at the detail here… it’s definitely worn. Definitely circulated. That this is an AU and it’s not an AU58. It does have some abrasions well above AU50.
But I would say this is an AU50 to be conservative. And I usually grade it on the conservative side. I would rather have a coin that is graded lower than it actually is, than the opposite. But I would say this coin looking at the details here… “AU50 Obverse: traces of wear showing the cheek and jaw.” Which they do… right? “Reverse: traces of wear showing the wheat stocks.” Well, this is of course for a coin that’s a wheat cent. This is a Lincoln Memorial — so we’ll go ahead and forgo that information. We’ll use the obverse here to judge the grade of the coin in this case. “AU55 obverse: only a trace of wear shows on the highest points of the jaw.”
And you know what? Looking at this coin there is ample detail there on that jaw. I see his beard. His hairlines. You can see the cheekbone very clearly. I don’t think it’s an AU58. Has some signs of abrasion. High points of cheek and jaw. Tips of wheat stocks — again, wheat stocks are not relevant to this particular coin here. I would say, if I were grading this coin… let’s give it a grade of AU55. Okay? Now that’s a conservative grade. But, I would rather, again, be conservative than go over the top and over grade this coin. So we’ve got that information on that coin. Let’s go ahead and look at this 1977 Lincoln cent. Now, this Lincoln cent, if you look at it, it’s actually got traces of luster in there. It’s definitely an AU… looking at this right away and comparing it to the other one we just looked at a minute ago. You can see that the details really are about the same. We’ve got plenty of cheekbone detail. Beard detail. I would say this also is an AU55.
Now, I’ve got here this 1957-D Lincoln cent and as you see it’s got wheat stalks — it’s a wheat cent — so it’s going to be a little bit easier to grade using the ANA information here in this book. If I can get it out with one hand it would be a miracle wouldn’t it? And I did! Look at that… miracles do happen. Now once again, we see here this coin has very nice detail overall — both on the obverse and the reverse. Look at the wheat stocks. They’re almost completely defined. But, if you compare it to the cheekbones and the beard on these two 1977’s which have ample evidence of detail there… the 1957 Denver center does not share that same level of detail. So it’s definitely not an AU55. So I wouldn’t even start grading at that level. I’ll start looking at the XF. And we see here… “XF45: slight wear shows on the hair above ear on the cheek and the jaw” — which it does. “Reverse: high points of wheat stalks are lightly worn but each line is clearly defined” — which we see. Now there’s some wear there on that coin. But each line of the wheat stalks… each line IS defined very well. So…
If I had to grade this coin, I would call it safely an XF45. You could go a little lower and say XF40 — but we see that the wear here is not really that bad. You know, if we compare it here to this XF for example in the picture, this coin on the left… in my hands… seems to have a little bit better, more well-defined detail. So, in my eyes, I view this coin an XF45.
Now again, these are my grading opinions based on my interpretation of the ANA grading standards. You’re going to have yours as well. But I hope that at least what you see here demonstrates for you how you might grade a coin using a well-known resource like the ANA grading standards. You might have your own that you choose to use. Mine is the ANA because that’s the most generic and one of those respected overarching grading authorities in the Numismatic community. So, that’s how I grade coins myself. I wish you all the best in your grading adventures. Thank you for watching. Please leave comments below. Like and share if you prefer. And have a great day. Happy collecting!
