I saw a dealer selling $20 Gold Liberties in "CU" condition. What grade is this generally supposed to be?
You saw a dealer? Or, you saw a dealer's ad? I don't have the slightest idea what "CU" means unless it was just a typo. A lot of people don't bother to proofread their listings. Chris
Choice Uncirculated. It is usually a term for Currency but older Coin dealers use it from time to time.
I think this is probably right, but you should always ask beforehand if there's any doubt. BTW, I thought the currency term was "crisp uncirculated"?
In the old days the terms AU, BU, & CU were frequently used in ads. About Uncirculated Brilliant Uncirculated Choice Uncirculated
CU=Choice Uncirculated, which is aka, A Slider. At least that's what a good friend and retired coin dealer I bought a lot from years ago told me.
Which proves that even back then they didn't agree on terms. I thought "Brilliant Uncirculated" to mean 63-ish, and "Choice Uncirculated" to be 64-65. Current written references disagree, as well - the first few Google results for "Choice Uncirculated" (including Heritage, the US Mint, Wikipedia, about.com) agree with me, while later results (Coin Week, PCGS Glossary) tend to disagree.
These are terms that pre-date contemporary slabbing. The old Stacks catalogs used this terminology throughout I was always under the impression that the following adjectives were used as approximations for what we now refer to with numbers: Uncirculated (Unc) = MS60 Choice Uncirculated (CU) = MS62-63 Brilliant Uncirculated (BU) = MS64 Gem Brilliant Uncirculated (Gem BU) = MS65+ It was (and still is) quite ambiguous, which wasn't good for collectors. The numerical identifiers are much better. Also, it's interesting that most European still use descriptors like those, rather than the numerical system. John
I agree with this. You see people using BU all over the place. It is for typical lower grade UNCs and is definitely lower than choice. Choice is a little better than typical BU and obviously Gem is 65 and above.
Call me a cynic but when I see a raw coin advertised as "brilliant uncirculated," my mind says "cleaned."
Especially if it's a semi-key date or key date. Too me it says "I submitted it multiple times, but it came back with a details grade each time, so now I'm going to sell it raw".
You could be right -- it depends. Depends if "Choice" is short for "Choice Brilliant Uncirculated", or "Choice BU" or just "Choice Uncirculated". The confusion was awful.
John, you are the closest. As you know, in the 1970's the grades MS-62, 63, 64 did not exist. A former staff member at ANACS in the early 1970's writes that coins were photographed, weighed, and graded for internal identification. They developed a very strict grading system (Technical or archival) based on the Sheldon scale. The only grades used for Uncirculated coins were: Uncirculated and Choice Uncirculated. Sheldon had an MS-70 but these coins were rarely encountered - most were Proofs. The market did not recognize MS-70. Uncirculated was used for all coins with NO TRACE OF WEAR. Once a coin had a trace it became AU. Today's grade equivalent: 60,61, 62, 63, and 64. Choice Uncirculated was used (exclusive of strike) on coins that today would grade 65 and higher. Choice coins had virtually no detracting marks, today they are called "Gem." After ANACS moved to CO, the former ANACS director (Charles Hoskins) and a group of coin dealers founded the International Numismatic Society which had an authentication bureau (INSAB) in competition with ANA made up of former staff authenticators. INSAB became the first grading service in the US predating ANACS by several months. INS used the same grading standards that were formerly used (technical). Other services such as NCI came along. As you know,both ANACS and INSAB were using grading standards that were not compatible with the market and PCGS came along to fill the need. IMO, ANA really created problems in their grading system (NOT TECHNICAL as they claimed) by combining the degree of wear on a coin with the number of marks! Sight unseen a person did not know if an AU-50 (typical) was a beat up coin with virtually no wear or a coin w/very few marks but worn down close to XF. I'm thankful the TPGS are doing a much better job of things and most can agree what an MS-63 (for example) looks like>
