My sentiment exactly, I had a listing pulled by eBay for putting a grade on a coin for sale at auction. I've spent well over fifty years in this hobby. And knowing grading has always been the key, if you don't know what your looking at you are buying blind.
Anyway their explanation was that it might influence a buyer unless it was certified by one of the big three services. Yet I see some of the most ridiculous listings imaginable. Coins that book at less than one dollar being listed at well over one hundred fifty and more just because someone stuck them in a plastic slab and hung a tag on them "gem", "choice" or some other term that is not a recognized description in the industry. The one I love the most is "average circulated", there is no such grade listed by the ANA.
It use to be you brought a Red Book and studied it until you worn out the pages. You bought the ANA book on Grading Standards and read it till your eyes hurt. And still the grade of any coin is an opinion of the person doing the grading. But hopefully that person has taken the time to be fairly close to about anyone else who would look at the same coin and who has studied the same material over the years. Other than that coins are probably the reason the old term "buyer beware" came into existence.
