Many of you read with interest and have encouraged me to pursue a CGS system that is mathematically sound. So what makes a model or grading system useful? Well, it has to have internal validity. What is that, you may ask? Its a fancy way of saying that it accurately measures what it purports to measure in a manner stable over time and multiple observations. So you get the same results over time, every time. the other construct to be considered is observational reliability. That means that you could in this case, show a coin to any grader and you will have almost perfect agreement in giving the coin a grade.

Some of you are aware that I bought 26.5 lbs of foreign coins in an auction in December. Its really hard to get your mind around that many coins and it was pretty heavy but manageable. On Friday Patty and I started sorting them into Western Hemisphere, Europe and 3rd world categories. I had to have a way to make sense of them instead of looking at dissimilar coins from everywhere. When I'm done with this I can sort them by country. And thee are a few countries that I did not have in my large foreign collection.