GLOSSARY OF PRECIOUS METALS AND GRADED COIN TERMS:
- Ask Price – The selling or offer price.
- Bid Price – The price someone offers to pay you for your coin or bar.
- Bullion – Precious metals like platinum, palladium, gold or silver in the form of bars or coins in varying weights and sizes.
- Collector Coins – Typically modern issue coins released in a controlled mintage.
- Historic Coins – As it sounds, coins linked to some notable historic event such as shipwreck coins or even bars.
- Numismatic Coin – A coin whose value is based on grade, rarity, demand, condition, and mintage.
- Melt Value – The basic intrinsic bullion value of a coin if it were melted and sold as a percentage weight times current market price.
- Premium – The amount by which the coin or bar exceeds the actual value of its metal content.
- Spot Price – The current live bid/ask price of a metal or commodity as it trades on a futures exchange.
- Futures Price – Metals as a commodity trades on a futures exchange with forward delivery dates.
- Spread – The difference between the buying price and the selling price.
- Troy Ounce – The unit of weight for precious metals which is slightly heavier than a normal or Avoirdupois Ounce.
- Grading Service – An accepted third party that assigns a Numismatic grade to a coin using the Sheldon Grading Scale. The most recognized and popular are NGC and PCGS.
- Coin Grade – The Official American Numismatic Association grading standard known as the Sheldon Grading Scale using a 70-point scale.
- Fineness – The purity of a coin or bar based on what percentage of 100% is something, like .995.
- Sterling – Percent of a finished silver product which is .925.
- Karat – Measurement of jewelry purity where 24 karat is 100%.
- MS – Mint State
- Proof– Knows as PR or PF is not a grade, rather the technique the coin was manufactured.
SHELDON GRADING SCALE:
1 = PO1 Basal State-1
2 = FR2 Fair
3 = AG03 Very Fair
4 = G4 Good
6 = G6 Good
8 = VG8 Very Good
10 = VG10 Very Good
12 = F12 Fine
15 = F15 Fine
20 = VF20 Very Fine
25 = VF25 Very Fine
30 = VF30 Very Fine
35 = VF35 Very Fine
40 = XF40 Extremely Fine
45 = XF45 Extremely Fine
50 = AU50 About Uncirculated
53 = AU53 About Uncirculated
55 = AU55 About Uncirculated
58 = AU58 About Uncirculated
60 = MS60 Mint State
61 = MS61 Mint State
62 = MS62 Mint State
63 = MS63 Mint State
64 = MS64 Mint State
65 = MS65 Mint State
66 = MS66 Mint State
67 = MS67 Mint State
68 = MS68 Mint State
69 = MS69 Mint State
70 = MS70 Mint State, (the perfect coin)
PROOF GRADES:
60 = PR60
61 = PR61
62 = PR62
63 = PR63
64 = PR64
65 = PR65
66 = PR66
67 = PR67
68 = PR68
69 = PR69
70 = PR70