Is online grading of any value? If so which service is best

[littleredflower]

As a newbie I've read articles on the site about grading. I've studied books. Most people agree that grading is subjective. However with the recent advances in AI is it possible to use this technology, which can recognise a person as an individual amongst billions, to grade coins consistently?

[Coverte]

9 minutes ago, littleredflower said:

As a newbie I've read articles on the site about grading. I've studied books. Most people agree that grading is subjective. However with the recent advances in AI is it possible to use this technology, which can recognise a person as an individual amongst billions, to grade coins consistently?

No, very sceptical AI could be trained in the many aspects of grading, as the varying and potentially contradictory input/s, from varying purported experts, would almost certainly exceed current AI learning capabilities.

[dicker]

So it is very much a personal choice.  Personally I grade very few coins, and only to guarantee authenticity when I am not certain, or if they are special errors.

There are differences between PGGS / NGC but I don’t want to start a big debate on the differences, but I do understand that NGC are harder to get errors recognised by….

Oh and I completely agree on AI!

[littleredflower]

fehk2001 just posted this on one of my 'for sale' posts:

New, Free PCGS Photograde Online

By

 Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS)

 - 

December 30, 2009

16

Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) has launched PCGS Photograde™ Online (www.PCGS.com/Photograde) as part of the recently revamped PCGS web site. An Apple iPhoneTM version also is available.

[Petra]

31 minutes ago, littleredflower said:

fehk2001 just posted this on one of my 'for sale' posts:

New, Free PCGS Photograde Online

By

 Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS)

 - 

December 30, 2009

16

Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) has launched PCGS Photograde™ Online (www.PCGS.com/Photograde) as part of the recently revamped PCGS web site. An Apple iPhoneTM version also is available.

You can then stick it in your own lump of plastic!😮🤔😁

[paulmerton]

I've heard that the Royal Mint is now using AI for quality control.

I therefore have strong doubts that it would be suitable for grading coins 🤣

[GoldDiggerDave]

For a guide and education purposes it can help a bit and even PCGS state its an approximate grade only ,   there a so many factors in grading coins other than the net grade which is mostly based on wear, but other factors are applied, eye appeal, strike, surface,  cleaning I also look at consistency and condition (I spit wear and condition into 2 separate appraisals) 

Also grading scales are not always compatible  at times the British descriptive V's Sheldon scale can be at conflict with one another which can cause confusion for many people.   The standard guide to grading British coins by Derek Francis is helpful this is  guide not a bible even by the authors own words.    

The words they have used to describe the tiers within the British descriptive scale are  sugar coating to misleading.   Fine, Very fine, Extremely fine just these 3 for example look at it as you were buying a used car.

Fine really means higher than average miles,  well used, more than a few dents and the electric windows don't all work, and it's like to cost you on the next MOT. 

Very fine, average miles, run of the mill normal condition for the age and year of the car 

Extremely fine,  lower than average miles, well looked after, some old boy only drove it on a Sunday. 

Poor.....if this was a car it would be a total write off and so worn and damaged most people would not be able to recognise the make or model of the car, the number plate is just barely recognisable.

The words described for the tiers conjures up ideals that to many think they are getting something of a better quality, if I invited you to a party and said you were getting very fine wine and  cigars, and you got £7  tesco wine and a 5 pack of Hamlet  would you be thinking I mislead you?     Would you be expecting a bottle of A bottle of 1955 Château Mouton Rothschild and hand rolled Havana's ? Descriptive words by their very nature mean different things to different people and we wonder why grading is so confusing and subjective. 

This is way to big of a conversation to have in one post and not everyone  will agree,  look at images both on the PSCG and NGS as both sites have very good reference material on the subject, auction houses are also a fantastic  source of reference as the photography and commentary are very good in many instances.

@littleredflower welcome to the rabbit hole of grading coins!   

 

 

Edited August 20, 2023 by GoldDiggerDave

[littleredflower]

5 minutes ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

For a guide and education purposes it can help a bit and even PCGS state its an approximate grade only ,   there a so many factors in grading coins other than the net grade which is mostly based on wear, but other factors are applied, eye appeal, strike, surface,  cleaning I also look at consistency and condition (I spit wear and condition into 2 separate appraisals) 

Also grading scales are not always compatible  at times the British descriptive V's Sheldon scale can be at conflict with one another which can cause confusion for many people.   The standard guide to grading British coins by Derek Francis is helpful this is  guide not a bible even by the authors own words.    

The words they have used to describe the tiers within the British descriptive scale are  sugar coating to misleading.   Fine, Very fine, Extremely fine just these 3 for example look at it as you were buying a used car.

Fine really means higher than average miles,  well used, more than a few dents and the electric windows don't all work, and it's like to cost you on the next MOT. 

Very fine, average miles, run of the mill normal condition for the age and year of the car 

Extremely fine,  lower than average miles, well looked after, some old boy only drove it on a Sunday. 

Poor.....if this was a car it would be a total write off and so worn and damaged most people would not be able to recognise the make or model of the car, the number plate is just barely recognisable.

The words described for the tiers conjures up ideals that to many think they are getting something of a better quality, if I invited you to a party and said you were getting very fine wine and  cigars, and you got £7  tesco wine and a 5 pack of Hamlet  would you be thinking I mislead you?     Would you be expecting a bottle of A bottle of 1955 Château Mouton Rothschild and hand rolled Havana's ? Descriptive words by their very nature mean different things to different people and we wonder why grading is so confusing and subjective. 

This is way to big of a conversation to have in one post and not everyone  will agree,  look at images both on the PSCG and NGS as both sites have very good reference material on the subject, auction houses are also a fanatic source of reference as the photography and commentary are very good in many instances.

@littleredflower welcome to the rabbit hole of grading coins!   

 

 

Thanks @GoldDiggerDave. Very positive and helpful reply. I like the used car analogy. For me it's important to try to learn about grading. Most important for me is not to portray Geese as Swans.

[GoldDiggerDave]

@littleredflower the book I mentioned the standard guide to grading British coins is very helpful.  
 

it’s worth looking at a few different grading scales to get a feel for the overall grade.  
 

It  becomes easier when to settle on a type of coin ie sovereigns and you get more though your hands and see all different grades.

one thing about grading coins with the NGC etc is that you can build your own graded library of coins so you can used them as an hands on point of reference. 

[Silverlocks]

20 hours ago, littleredflower said:

As a newbie I've read articles on the site about grading. I've studied books. Most people agree that grading is subjective. However with the recent advances in AI is it possible to use this technology, which can recognise a person as an individual amongst billions, to grade coins consistently?

To address using AI, theoretically it would be possible to train a neural net to grade coins, but you would need a very large sample of coins including multiple examples of each possible type of mark on the coin.  The reason we're seeing generative predictive text technology come out today instead of 30 years ago is that the vendors have access to a vast library of stuff written and put up on the interwebs.  30 years ago we didn't have this resource, so getting training sets for GPT style models wasn't practical.

I think that the primary obstacle to training a grading AI would be to get a big enough library of samples.  And then, you will see training biases based on availability.  There were experiments in using this sort of tech for missile guidance systems and photo reconnaissance interpretation back as far as the 1970s or 1980s that had trouble with sample biases as well.  To this day, we still employ people for this. 

Until you can tell the AI things like 'look for wear on George's ear and the end of his 'tache, and the satin finish worn off the highlights of his hair', you're going to have trouble in the corner cases.

Edited August 20, 2023 by Silverlocks

[littleredflower]

Thanks for a great reply @Silverlocks. I suppose PCGS had their database already which enabled them to launch their www.PCGS.com/Photograde .

[Silverlocks]

9 minutes ago, littleredflower said:

Thanks for a great reply @Silverlocks. I suppose PCGS had their database already which enabled them to launch their www.PCGS.com/Photograde .

Photograde doesn't automatically grade your coins - it just provides a library of examples in each grade that you can compare your coin to.  I presume that this effectively gives you access to the database that their in-house graders use.  Also, they only support American circulated coins so it's not going to be much use if you wanted to grade (for example) a Romanian 20 Lei coin. 

 

Edited August 20, 2023 by Silverlocks

[littleredflower]

33 minutes ago, Silverlocks said:

Photograde doesn't automatically grade your coins - it just provides a library of examples in each grade that you can compare your coin to.  I presume that this effectively gives you access to the database that their in-house graders use.  Also, they only support American circulated coins so it's not going to be much use if you wanted to grade (for example) a Romanian 20 Lei coin. 

 

I use Coinsnap and it seems to get the identity correct every time. Annoying that you then have to photograph the coin a second time for grading, which comes with a condition report.

[Silverlocks]

52 minutes ago, littleredflower said:

I use Coinsnap and it seems to get the identity correct every time. Annoying that you then have to photograph the coin a second time for grading, which comes with a condition report.

Identifying coins is a much easier task for training AI than grading them.  I can't attest to the accuracy of Coinsnap for grading, though.

Source: I get paid to design analytic systems that incorporate machine learning tech on occasion, although not really for this type of application.  I can't say I'm an expert in the field, but I do have some idea of how these types of systems work.

Edited August 20, 2023 by Silverlocks

[littleredflower]

@Silverlocks Coinsnap give a free trial period which I took out months ago

[GoldDiggerDave]

@Silverlocks we do have the technology already with iPhones, they can have facial recognition with LiDAR, so you could point the phone at a coin and it pops out a grade……I would hate this. 
 

one of the best things about grading it’s down to referees decision at the time even VAR is no guarantee of getting the result correct 100% of the time.

 

@littleredflower never stop asking questions, and learn to trust your own judgement, it will take some time but don’t be discouraged.   
 

if it helps I do have lots of hi resolution images of NGC graded coins, Im more than happy to show you the images and the grades the coins achieved. 

[Silverlocks]

9 minutes ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

@Silverlocks we do have the technology already with iPhones, they can have facial recognition with LiDAR, so you could point the phone at a coin and it pops out a grade……I would hate this. 

It's certainly possible - Coinsnap's marketing collateral claims this capability.  The quality of the results is contingent on the quality of the training sets.  Recognising a coin is an easier task, as you have gross shapes to pick up.  Recognising and interpreting wear would, I suspect, require a much larger training set.  Maybe the grading companies' coin databases would be sufficient.  After all, the app doesn't have to be able to guess what the grader is thinking at the time, only indicate a likely outcome.

Edited August 20, 2023 by Silverlocks

[littleredflower]

On 20/08/2023 at 09:59, GoldDiggerDave said:

For a guide and education purposes it can help a bit and even PCGS state its an approximate grade only ,   there a so many factors in grading coins other than the net grade which is mostly based on wear, but other factors are applied, eye appeal, strike, surface,  cleaning I also look at consistency and condition (I spit wear and condition into 2 separate appraisals) 

Also grading scales are not always compatible  at times the British descriptive V's Sheldon scale can be at conflict with one another which can cause confusion for many people.   The standard guide to grading British coins by Derek Francis is helpful this is  guide not a bible even by the authors own words.    

The words they have used to describe the tiers within the British descriptive scale are  sugar coating to misleading.   Fine, Very fine, Extremely fine just these 3 for example look at it as you were buying a used car.

Fine really means higher than average miles,  well used, more than a few dents and the electric windows don't all work, and it's like to cost you on the next MOT. 

Very fine, average miles, run of the mill normal condition for the age and year of the car 

Extremely fine,  lower than average miles, well looked after, some old boy only drove it on a Sunday. 

Poor.....if this was a car it would be a total write off and so worn and damaged most people would not be able to recognise the make or model of the car, the number plate is just barely recognisable.

The words described for the tiers conjures up ideals that to many think they are getting something of a better quality, if I invited you to a party and said you were getting very fine wine and  cigars, and you got £7  tesco wine and a 5 pack of Hamlet  would you be thinking I mislead you?     Would you be expecting a bottle of A bottle of 1955 Château Mouton Rothschild and hand rolled Havana's ? Descriptive words by their very nature mean different things to different people and we wonder why grading is so confusing and subjective. 

This is way to big of a conversation to have in one post and not everyone  will agree,  look at images both on the PSCG and NGS as both sites have very good reference material on the subject, auction houses are also a fantastic  source of reference as the photography and commentary are very good in many instances.

@littleredflower welcome to the rabbit hole of grading coins!   

 

 

I have taken your advice @GoldDiggerDave and am looking forward to receiving my copy of The standard guide to grading British coins by Derek Francis. Thanks for yours and all other members, kind help and interest

Kevin

[GoldDiggerDave]

31 minutes ago, littleredflower said:

I have taken your advice @GoldDiggerDave and am looking forward to receiving my copy of The standard guide to grading British coins by Derek Francis. Thanks for yours and all other members, kind help and interest

Kevin

It's a very good book and gives you some place to start with grading coins.   It's a good exercise to get a few of your coins out once you get the book and try and grade them against the pictures and descriptions.