Читать книгу Coin Collecting For Dummies - Neil S. Berman - Страница 46

The condition of a coin is a hugely important factor in determining its price. The difference in a single point on the grading scale can equate to a difference of thousands of dollars in value. Because of the intense competition to own the finest known example of a given date, a large premium can be attached to the very best coins.

Take the 1953-S Franklin half dollar as an example. This coin is very common in low grades, worth perhaps only the value of the silver it contains. Even in Uncirculated condition, you can buy a nice-looking example for around $100. But well-struck, high-grade examples are extremely rare and more valuable. How valuable? In January 2001, the finest certified 1953-S Franklin half dollar came on the market and sold at auction for a whopping $69,000! If you think that price is crazy, you may very well be right, but remember that at least one underbidder wanted the coin almost as badly as the winner did.

When Dr. William Sheldon devised his 70-point pricing scale with numismatist Walter Breen in the 1940s, he noticed that price and condition followed each other rather closely (at least, in the large cents he collected and studied). Sheldon saw that collectors considered the finest example of any date to be worth 70 times the value of the worst example. A Very Fine example may be worth 20 to 30 times the value of the worst example, and an About Uncirculated coin may be worth 50 to 55 times as much. Using this information, Sheldon and Breen created a scale to show the relationship between the grades and prices of large cents. Later, the coin market morphed this pricing scale into a grading system that was applied to other series of U.S. coins, even though inflation had already destroyed the relationship between price and condition. Today, the Sheldon-Breen grading scale is the bedrock of U.S. numismatics, and the number 70 is universally recognized as the pinnacle of quality.