We had a chap come and visit us yesterday. He was looking to buy 20th century coins and he was insistent they be in no less than BU condition. He said somewhat disparagingly that he had looked through our list and saw we had very little in BU and that in most cases the best grade we had was in AU, which he assumed stood for About Uncirculated. Well first things first. AU always stands for Almost Uncirculated. If we are describing something as About Uncirculated, that will shorten to Abt. Uncirculated. For those of you who will ask what About Uncirculated means, it means a grade between AU and UNC. We told our friend that we could direct him to any number of dealers who call virtually everything they list as BU. The fact remains that whichever dealer you want to talk about, we all get our coins from the same sources, and we all pay around the same prices. Most of the coins we are listing as AU were bought by us as Unc or BU. In our opinion it is a nonsense to refer to any pre 1816 as BU, and that very few coins indeed before 1930 are ever going to be worthy of BU. A BU grade should be, not only unmarked, but have full even lustre. Collectors need to be realistic, and sensible. Worry less about what a dealer grades the coin as, and more about what the coin actually grades at.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 07:09:09 +0000
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