02-04-2022, 12:19 PM
I suspect by a "hard" grader they probably meant on standard! When I think of USA grading I guess I really just mean PCGS and NGC graded coins. Now I'm not saying the USA grading is any more accurate than NZ grading. But there is a lot more graduation to the USA grading system than the basic AVE, VF, EF, AU, UNC as described in Bertrand. That leads to a bigger incentive in NZ to up the grade by one given the significant benefit in value that can be obtained by doing so. With the USA grading I can be fairly confident that an MS65 coin will be "better" than an MS62. However with NZ I would be less confident that a coin described as AU is better than one described EF.