The 1–70 Sheldon scale

US coins are graded on the Sheldon scale, which runs from 1 to 70. Dr. William Sheldon came up with it in 1949 for early large cents, and the major grading services later adopted it for coins of every kind. Each grade has a number and an abbreviation, and the abbreviation tells you which band the coin is in:

“Good” is one of the lowest grades on the scale. The names come from an era when any coin you could still read counted as good. Read the number, not the adjective.

The step that matters most is from AU-58 to MS-60. Below it, a coin has circulated. Above it, it never has. An AU-58 can look better than a low Mint State coin, and dealers often like them for that reason, but no amount of eye appeal makes a coin with wear Mint State.

Inside Mint State: why MS-63 and MS-65 are priced so differently

Within the Mint State range, grades are about contact marks (the nicks coins pick up rubbing against each other in mint bags), luster, strike and overall eye appeal:

• MS-60 to MS-62: uncirculated, but with plenty of marks, dull luster or a weak strike.
• MS-63 (“Choice”): some marks, but nothing that distracts.
• MS-65 (“Gem”): only minor marks, with strong luster and good eye appeal.
• MS-67 and up: superb coins with marks you’ll struggle to find without magnification.
• MS-70: perfect, with no flaws visible under 5× magnification.

Price doesn’t rise smoothly through those grades. For many older series it jumps at a few points, especially at MS-65, where a coin can be worth several times what the same coin brings at MS-64. Before you pay a high-grade price, check what the next grade down sells for. Whether the coin is a key date matters as well: the coin catalog ranks each series’ scarce years by mintage.

Modern bullion and commemoratives work the other way. Most survive in high grades, so MS-69 is common and the premium is mostly for MS-70, which is the grade people buy them for.

Proofs are graded on the same scale

Proof coins are struck with polished dies on specially prepared blanks for collectors, not for circulation. They use the same 1–70 numbers with a PR or PF prefix, so PF-68 means a proof graded 68. A proof can also be worn, and a circulated proof gets a grade like PR-45. Proof grading focuses on hairlines from handling and the contrast between frosted design and mirrored fields.

The letters and symbols after the number

Graded coins often carry extra designations on the label. The common ones:

• Plus (+): a coin at the top of its grade, nearly the next one up. Used by PCGS and NGC from about EF-45 to MS-68.
• Star (★): NGC’s mark for exceptional eye appeal, often attractive toning.
• Color, for copper: RD (red), RB (red-brown) and BN (brown). Full red copper is worth the most.
• Proof contrast: Cameo, Deep Cameo (DCAM) or Ultra Cameo (UCAM) for proofs with strongly frosted designs against mirrored fields. Prooflike (PL) and Deep Mirror Prooflike (DMPL) mean the same kind of look on business strikes such as Morgan dollars.
• Full strike designations: Full Bands (FB) on Mercury dimes, Full Bell Lines (FBL) on Franklin halves, Full Head (FH) on Standing Liberty quarters and Full Steps (FS) on Jefferson nickels. A full strike can be worth far more than the same grade without one.
• CAC sticker: a green (or gold) sticker on a PCGS or NGC holder means CAC reviewed the coin and agreed that it’s solid for its grade, or better. CAC now also grades coins in its own holders.

”Details” grades: when a coin has a problem

Some coins can’t get a straight grade because something has happened to them: they’ve been cleaned, scratched, bent, tooled, damaged by the environment, or covered in residue from old PVC flips. Rather than giving a number, the services describe the coin by how much wear it shows and name the problem. The label reads something like “AU Details – Cleaned”. NGC calls these details grades, and PCGS puts them in its “Genuine” holders.

A details coin is authenticated, so you know it’s real. It’s also worth much less than a problem-free coin at the same level of wear, often a fraction. If you’re buying, read the whole label, not just the letters that look like a grade. If you’re cataloging, record the details designation as well as the wear level, so the collection’s value isn’t overstated.

It’s also the best argument for never cleaning a coin. Polishing a dull coin can take it from a straight grade to details in a few seconds, and the damage can’t be undone.

When third-party grading is worth paying for

PCGS and NGC are the two largest grading services. ANACS, ICG and CACG also grade coins. Each authenticates the coin, grades it and seals it in a tamper-evident holder with a unique certification number. Grading isn’t cheap. Once you add submission fees, shipping and insurance both ways, and any membership, expect to pay roughly $20 to $100 or more per coin, depending on the service, the coin’s value and how fast you want it back. Check the current fee schedules before you send anything.

It’s usually worth it when:

• Value depends on the grade. One grade either side can be worth more than the fee.
• The coin is a key date or often counterfeited. Authentication is half of what you’re paying for, and buyers will ask for it.
• You plan to sell online. Buyers who can’t see the coin rely on the holder, and certified coins sell more easily.
• It’s a modern coin that might be a 70. The difference between 69 and 70 can be large.

It usually isn’t worth it for common bullion, circulated common dates or junk silver, where the coin is worth about its metal and grading would cost more than it adds.

Before you buy a certified coin, look up its certification number on the grading service’s website. PCGS and NGC both offer free lookups. The result should match the coin, date, grade and photos in front of you. It’s the quickest check for a fake holder.

Grading a raw coin yourself

You won’t match a professional grader, but you can get close enough to know whether a coin is worth sending in:

1. Use a single, angled light and tilt the coin under it. Wear and hairlines show up as the light moves.
2. Look at the high points first, such as the cheek, hair and eagle’s breast, depending on the design. Wear starts there.
3. Use a 5× to 7× loupe. Higher magnification makes every coin look terrible.
4. Compare with photos of certified coins of the same type at a few grades. Both PCGS and NGC publish them.
5. Handle coins by the edges, over something soft, and never wipe or clean them.

Be conservative with your own estimate. Most collectors grade their own coins a little too high.

Recording grades so your numbers stay honest

For anything certified, record three things: the grade (including any designations), the grading service and the certification number. The cert number is what ties your record to the actual coin. It also helps with insurance claims and lets a buyer verify the coin when you sell. For raw coins, note your own estimate and mark it as raw, so you never mistake it for a certified grade later. If you also keep metal and weight, you’ll always know what a coin is worth as metal, separately from what it might bring as a collectible. Our guide to organizing a coin collection covers the rest of a good record.

In My Coin Stack, every item in your Collection has fields for the grade, the grading service (PCGS, NGC, ANACS, ICG, CAC or raw) and the certification number, along with photos of the coin and its slab label. These are included on every plan, the free one too. You can then filter the collection by grading service and grade, and a data-quality filter lists every item that’s still missing a grade.

The Analysis tab in Reports shows how much of your collection is graded versus raw, how your graded coins are split between services, and how they’re spread across grades. And when you list a graded coin on the Marketplace, the grade, service and cert number carry over as structured fields, so buyers can see them and look them up without asking.

The Analysis report breaks a collection down into graded and raw coins, and the graded ones by service and grade.

Try it

Pick a few of your best coins and add their grades and cert numbers in any browser, on mobile or on your TV. Once every slab has its number on record, you’ll know exactly what you have and how each grade was decided.

This article is general information about coin grading, not financial advice. Grading standards and fees vary by service and change over time; check each service’s own guides and fee schedules.

For a dozen coins, it usually is. The trouble starts when you want the spreadsheet to answer questions. What is all this worth today? Am I up or down? How much silver do I actually have? Answering those means keeping a lot of things up to date by hand, and that’s the work most people stop doing.

Here’s where a spreadsheet tends to break down, and what a dedicated app like My Coin Stack does instead.

At a glance

1. Spot prices that are actually current

A spreadsheet only knows the spot price you last typed into it. That one number feeds every melt value in the sheet, so when it’s three weeks old, every total built on it is three weeks old too. Gold and silver need separate cells, platinum gets forgotten, and sooner or later a formula ends up pointing at the wrong one.

My Coin Stack pulls live prices for gold, silver, platinum and palladium and values your whole collection against them. Each metal shows its move against the previous close, and when the market is closed the app tells you, so you never mistake a frozen price for a live one. The same live price drives the melt value on every item and every catalog entry.

Spot prices refresh on their own, and every melt value in the app follows them.

2. A catalog that knows the weights for you

To work out melt value in a spreadsheet, every row needs the coin’s weight and purity. That means looking them up: a Morgan dollar is 0.859 oz at 90% silver, a Gold Eagle is 22 karat, a Britannia is .9999 fine, and so on for every coin you own. It’s slow, and one wrong digit quietly throws off the total.

My Coin Stack has a reference catalog of more than 60,000 coins. Search for the coin, pick the finish you have, and the metal, weight and purity come from the catalog, along with the year, country and mint. You’re confirming details rather than researching them. Catalog entries also flag key dates and show mintages, so the expensive years stand out before you overpay for a common one.

Search, pick the finish, and the weight and purity come from the catalog.

If a coin isn’t in the catalog yet, you can request it from inside the app.

3. Reports you don’t have to build

A spreadsheet can produce a report, but you have to build it: a pivot table here, a chart there, and formulas that break when you insert a row. Most collection spreadsheets never get past a single total at the bottom of the sheet, and that total often reads #VALUE!.

Reports in My Coin Stack gives you four views of the same collection, already built:

• Financial: collection value, total invested, ROI, average cost per item and total weight, with value over time and monthly acquisitions.
• Composition: what your stack is made of, broken down by metal, style, country and vendor.
• Quality: how complete your records are, with a list of the specific items missing a price, photo or grade.
• Analysis: the premium you’ve paid over melt, charted over time, and how your graded coins break down by service and grade.

You can filter the whole report at once by model, country, mint, vendor or tag, so a question like “what has this one dealer actually cost me?” is a couple of taps, not a new tab.

The Financial view: value, cost and return, without writing a formula.

4. Searching and sorting without breaking anything

Sorting a spreadsheet works until someone sorts one column without the others, and the 1887 Morgan’s purchase price ends up on the wrong row. Filtering by more than one thing at a time means remembering how the filter menu works, and finding a coin across a few hundred rows means scrolling.

In the Collection, search runs across model, year, country, mint and vendor as you type. Filters stack: metal, style, country, grading service, grade, your own tags, and quick toggles for fractional pieces or 1 oz and up. Sort by value, weight, year or date added, and the rest of each record always travels with it. Select several items at once to archive or edit them together.

Filters stack, sorts never scramble a row, and bulk edits take a few taps.

5. Your collection, wherever you are

A spreadsheet lives in one file. Maybe it’s on your desktop, maybe in a cloud folder, but either way it’s awkward to open on a phone at a coin show, when you’re standing at a dealer’s table wondering whether you already own that date.

My Coin Stack keeps your collection in the cloud and syncs it to every device you use. Use it in any browser, on mobile, or on your TV. Add a coin on your phone at the show and it’s in your reports on the laptop when you get home. Photos go with it too: obverse, reverse and slab, stored on the item instead of in a folder somewhere else.

One collection on the web, your phone, your TV and your wrist.

When a spreadsheet is still enough

To be fair to the spreadsheet: if you have a small collection, don’t care about melt value, and mostly want a list to look at, it does the job. It’s free and it’s yours.

My Coin Stack is free for up to 25 items, with every report and the full catalog included. Pro removes the item limit. And if you outgrow the app, or just want a copy, it exports back to CSV and Excel whenever you like.

Moving your spreadsheet over

You don’t need to retype anything. My Coin Stack imports from CSV and Excel on every plan, so your existing spreadsheet can come with you, and the support site has step-by-step guides for the import. Once it’s in, the Quality report will show you which records to finish first. If you’re tidying your records as you go, our guide to organizing a coin collection covers the habits that make every report more accurate.

The catalog now holds more than 60,000 coins from over 200 countries. American classics are there, from Flying Eagle cents to Morgan dollars. So are modern bullion programs like the Maple Leaf, Britannia, Krugerrand and Philharmonic, and thousands of world and commemorative issues from Afghanistan to Vanuatu. Here’s what you can do with it.

One search for everything

Tap the search icon at the top of the app and start typing. A single search box covers the whole catalog and your own collection and sets, so you don’t have to decide in advance where you’re looking.

Results arrive as you type, with counts for each section: catalog, collection and sets. Tap a chip to narrow the list, or leave it on All. Each catalog row shows the metal at a glance (Au, Ag, Pt, Pd, copper) along with the years the coin was struck. A gold star with a number marks a coin that has key dates, so the series worth a closer look stand out before you open them.

Search for “Eagle” and you’ll see US gold eagles from 1795 onward, the Flying Eagle cent, Silver, Platinum and Palladium Eagles, and eagle-themed coins from Fiji, Niue and Canada, plus the Eagles already in your collection.

One search covers the catalog, your collection and your sets. Open a coin to see every year and version.

Mintages and key dates, before you buy

Open a coin and you get its full reference page. Pick a year with the year picker, or jump straight to a key date with one tap. Choose the mint mark and finish, or the version for bullion coins: the Silver Maple Leaf lists sizes from 1/20 oz up to 10 oz, along with Proof and Reverse Proof strikes.

Below that, Key dates ranks the scarce issues by mintage, lowest first. Each one has a bar that shows how rare it is compared with the scarcest, so you can see at a glance how much rarer the 1893-S Morgan is than the dates around it.

Tap any year for the details of that exact issue:

• Metal and purity, for example 90% silver
• Gross weight and pure metal content, in troy ounces
• Melt value at today’s live spot price
• Mintage, the number struck that year at that mint
• Obverse and reverse descriptions: who designed the coin and what’s on each side

If the issue is a key date, a banner says so and gives the reason, such as lowest business strike. Want one for your collection? Add it to your wishlist from the same screen.

Key dates ranked by mintage, and everything about one issue on a single card.

This is the page to check at a coin show. If a dealer has a stack of Morgans, you can see in seconds which dates are common and which deserve a second look, without leaving the app.

Adding a coin takes the catalog with it

The catalog isn’t only for looking things up. It also saves you from typing when you add a coin to your collection.

In Add item, pick the style and metal and, if you like, narrow by country. Then search the catalog for the model. Results show the metal, the country and how many issues the catalog holds for that coin: the Canadian Silver Maple Leaf has 81.

Enter the year, and Which one do you have? shrinks to the versions struck that year: every size, plus the Proof, Reverse Proof and privy-marked editions. Pick yours, and the weight and purity are locked to the catalog values. You confirm details rather than look them up, and a wrong digit can’t quietly skew your melt value.

Search the catalog, pick your version, and the weight and purity are filled in for you.

Adding a whole run of years? Bulk Add Year Range lets you tick off the years and mint marks you own and adds them all at once, each with its own weight and purity from the catalog. It’s handy for a date set or a run of annual bullion coins.

Once a coin is in your collection, its melt value tracks the live spot price, and it counts toward your reports. Because the weight and purity came from the catalog, every total built on them starts from accurate numbers.

When a coin isn’t there yet

With 60,000+ entries the catalog covers most of what collectors bring to it, but not everything. If you can’t find a coin, you can still add it by typing your own model name and entering the weight and purity yourself. You can also ask for it to be added to the catalog from inside the app. The catalog keeps growing, and requests help decide what gets added next.

Try it

The full catalog is included on every plan, free one too. Search it in any browser, on mobile, or on your TV, and look up a coin before you buy it. If you’re still tracking your coins in a spreadsheet, our comparison of a coin spreadsheet and an app shows what the catalog saves you from typing.

What “spot” actually means

The spot price is the current market price for one troy ounce of pure metal, traded in bulk. It moves all day while markets are open. Nobody sells a single coin at spot: spot is the benchmark the coin’s price is built on.

Two details trip people up:

• Troy ounces, not regular ounces. A troy ounce is 31.1035 grams; the ounce on your kitchen scale is 28.35. Precious metals are always priced in troy ounces.
• Pure metal, not total weight. Spot is priced per ounce of pure gold or silver. A coin that weighs one ounce but is 90% silver has 0.9 oz of silver in it.

Step 1: work out the melt value

Melt value is what the metal in the coin is worth at today’s spot:

Melt value = weight (troy oz) × purity × spot price

For most modern bullion the mint has done the first part for you. An American Silver Eagle contains exactly one troy ounce of fine silver, so its melt value is simply the silver spot price.

Gold is where the trap is. A one-ounce American Gold Eagle is 22-karat (91.67% gold) and weighs about 1.09 troy ounces in total, because it’s alloyed to be harder wearing. It still contains exactly one ounce of gold. Always calculate from the pure metal content, not the gross weight or the size stamped on the packaging.

Step 2: work out the premium

Once you know the melt value, the premium is the gap between it and the asking price:

Premium ($) = asking price − melt value

Premium (%) = premium ÷ melt value × 100

Here’s a worked example with illustrative prices. Silver spot is $64.66 and gold spot is $4,291.10:

Step 3: compare offers by percentage, not price

A $71 coin and a $510 coin can’t be compared on price. They can be compared on premium percentage, or on cost per pure ounce (asking price ÷ pure ounces):

• The Silver Eagle costs $71.00 per ounce of silver, 9.8% over spot.
• The 1/10 oz gold coin costs $5,100 per ounce of gold, 18.9% over spot.

The premium percentage puts both on the same scale: on these numbers, you’re paying almost twice as much over the metal for the small gold coin.

Why some products carry bigger premiums

Premiums aren’t random. A few things push them up or down:

• Size. Minting, packaging and handling cost roughly the same per piece whatever it weighs, so fractional coins (1/10 oz, 1/4 oz) carry much higher percentage premiums than one-ounce coins, and large bars carry the lowest.
• Product type. Government-minted coins usually cost more than generic rounds and bars from private refiners. You’re paying for recognition and easier resale.
• Demand. When demand spikes, premiums widen even if spot doesn’t move.
• How you pay and ship. Many dealers price card payments higher than bank wire or check, and shipping on a small order can add several percent.

Set your tolerance before you shop

The most useful habit is deciding in advance what premium you’ll accept for each kind of product: say, 8% on one-ounce silver coins and 4% on gold bars. Then any quote is a quick yes or no rather than a judgement call made while the “buy now” button is staring at you.

Keep in mind that the premium is mostly a cost, not an investment. When you sell common bullion back to a dealer, you’ll typically get a price near spot rather than the full premium you paid, so a lower premium going in is real money kept.

Doing it in My Coin Stack

The Buy Analyzer does all of the above against live spot prices. Enter the metal, weight, purity and asking price for each offer you’re considering, and it returns melt value, premium in dollars and percent, and cost per pure ounce, then names the best deal in plain language.

You can set your own premium tolerance so each offer is color-coded against your idea of a fair price, normalize every option to the same quantity, or enter a budget and see how much of each it buys. If spot moves while you’re deciding, lock it so the numbers hold still.

This article is general information about how bullion is priced, not financial advice.

Here are five habits that keep a collection reportable, whatever you use to track it.

1. Record what you paid, every time

Your cost basis, what you actually paid including any premium, is the one number you can’t look up later. Spot prices are public; your receipt isn’t. Without it you can see what a coin is worth, but not whether buying it was a good idea.

Record the price, the date, the vendor and the quantity when the coin arrives, not when you get round to it. Vendor matters more than it seems: over a year or two it tells you which dealers you really buy from, and what they’ve cost you.

2. Keep melt value and market value apart

A graded Morgan dollar and a generic silver round can hold similar amounts of silver and be worth wildly different amounts. If your records only track metal, collectible coins are undervalued; if they only track market price, your bullion is guessed at. Record the metal, weight and purity for every item so melt value can be calculated, and the grade, grading service and certification number for anything slabbed.

3. Photograph it once, properly

Obverse, reverse, and the slab label if there is one. Photos settle insurance questions, make selling easier, and are the fastest way to tell two similar coins apart in your own records.

4. Know where every coin physically is

A storage location on each record (which box, which safe, which page of which album) is what turns a list into an inventory. If your collection has outgrown one container, labels help even more: a printed label with a barcode on each flip or slab means you can scan it and pull up the record, rather than reading tiny dates under a lamp.

5. Archive, don’t delete

When you sell or trade a coin, mark it as sold and keep the record. Deleting it erases the purchase, the sale and any gain or loss along with it. A year later, “what did I sell that for?” is a question you’ll want answered.

Finding the gaps you already have

Even with good habits, older records have holes. The trick is to make them visible instead of trying to remember them.

In My Coin Stack, the Collection has data-quality filters that pull up every item missing a purchase price, a photo or a grade, with a banner telling you how many there are. The Quality view in Reports scores the completeness of your whole collection, buckets it into Good, Warning and Poor, and lists the specific items dragging it down. Fix the top of that list and every other report gets more accurate.

Bringing an existing spreadsheet with you

If your records already live in a spreadsheet, you don’t have to start again: My Coin Stack imports from CSV and Excel on every plan, and exports back to the same formats whenever you want them. Your data is never locked in. The support site has step-by-step guides for the import.

Once it’s in, the filters above will tell you exactly which records to finish first.

Which coins count

Until 1965, US dimes, quarters and half dollars were struck in an alloy of 90% silver and 10% copper. Silver dollars (Morgans and Peace dollars) used the same alloy. That gives you a fixed, known amount of silver in every coin:

Because dimes, quarters and halves were made in exact proportion to their face value, $1 face value of any mix of them contains about 0.723 troy ounces of silver when new. Coins that have circulated for decades have lost a little to wear, so dealers commonly use 0.715 oz per $1 face as the working figure.

Silver dollars don’t follow that ratio (they hold more silver per dollar of face), and they often carry a collector premium, so they’re usually priced separately.

The coins that look like junk silver but aren’t

Two series catch people out:

• 1965–1970 Kennedy half dollars are 40% silver, not 90%. Each holds about 0.148 troy oz.
• 1942–1945 “war nickels” are 35% silver, about 0.056 troy oz each. You can spot them by the large mint mark above Monticello on the reverse.

And from 1965 onward, dimes and quarters contain no silver at all.

How to value a pile of junk silver

Add up the pure silver, then multiply by spot:

Melt value = number of coins × silver per coin × spot price

Forty Mercury dimes, for example, is $4.00 face value and 2.89357 troy ounces of silver (40 × 0.07234). At a silver spot price of $50, that’s $144.68 of silver.

Counting rolls is quicker. A standard roll holds 50 dimes ($5 face), 40 quarters ($10 face) or 20 half dollars ($10 face).

Checking a “times face” quote

Dealers usually quote junk silver as a multiple of face value: “35× face” means $35 for every $1 of face value. To compare that with spot, work out what $1 face is worth in metal:

Melt per $1 face = 0.715 × spot price

At a $50 spot, $1 face holds $35.75 of silver, so a quote of 35× face is right at melt, and 38× face is about a 6% premium. Run the same check every time; the multiple moves with spot, and a quote that was fair last month may not be today.

Look before you lump it in

Junk silver is sold by weight, and nobody checks every date. That’s the point: if you’re buying, it’s fast and simple. If you’re selling, or sorting an inherited jar, look first. A few dates are worth far more than their silver. The 1916-D Mercury dime and the 1932-D and 1932-S Washington quarters are the famous ones, and none of them belongs in a bag sold at melt.

Doing it in My Coin Stack

The Buy Analyzer has a dedicated constitutional silver calculator. Pick the coin, then count the coins, enter the face value, count rolls or just weigh the lot, whichever is easiest. It gives you face value, pure silver content and melt at today’s live spot price, plus a check against any “times face” offer you’ve been quoted.

And when you’re sorting, the coin catalog badges key dates, so the expensive years announce themselves before they go in the bag.

This article is general information, not financial advice. Silver content figures are for coins at full original weight.