Grading and Its Effect on Valuations
The act and art of grading coins, stamps and comic books has become a major industry in the preceding two decades. Numerous companies exist for the purpose of sending these objects to be examined and graded before being placed in a plastic slab to provide stability for the object.
For coins and stamps, there are long established standard grading guidelines that apply to each category.
These guidelines are easily found when viewing online sales where auction houses such as www.heritage.com, and Cherrystone Auctions to name only a few, publish accepted standard grading guidelines as set by the Amercian Philatelic Society, American Numismatic Society and in the realm of comics the Certified Guaranty Corporation. CGC is relatively new in comparison to the other organizations.
Any serious collector of numismatics, philately or comics should consider grading. And especially for those objects of greater rarity the difference in grades can amount to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in object value whether for the purposes of insuring the collection or its inevitable sale.
As an example below is an American 1895 S Silver dollar graded as MS 63 and valued at $8,000 while another two grades higher MS65 values at $21,500.
