It all means absolutely nothing....and by that I mean there is no such thing as a grade called, "Gem Quality, Museum Quality, Grade AAA, World Class Quality, G10" and so on.  These are simply titles that each seller, including myself, has "chosen" to give to his tooth...and again...it means absolutely nothing.

There is a very good reason why rare coins and rookie baseball cards are not graded by those who own them....it would be a total conflict of interest to grade your own item.   But at the same time, we all want to add some special "grab your attention" words that will attract buyers.  The problem really comes in when sellers start to grade every piece of junk broken tooth has a "Gem Quality" specimen. 

But let's break this all down for a second by getting super anal.

Let's start off with "Gem Quality" -- this quality is obviously meant for Gems....not fossils  but I am guilty of using this one myself.....multiple times.  And to be quite honest....it makes absolutely no sense....but hey....we all do it....just note that there is not such thing as Gem Quality in the sharks teeth world. 

Moving right along to "Museum Quality."  If you really want to get anal and break this quality down it should actually mean, "Low Grade because we got it for free Quality."  What does that mean?  It means most specimens that wind up in your average town museum are very low grade specimens. Why?  Because most museums do not have a high budget where they can go out and spend thousands of dollars per specimen. They are usually dependent upon noble collectors who are willing to donate some teeth to the museum for free.  Take the phosphate museum down here in Polk County, Florida...you know....where all the Bone Valley teeth are found.  You would think that the museum would have one of the best collections in the world.  Fact is....almost everything in it is a reproduction....almost nothing is real.  

Now does this mean that every museum has low quality fossils? Certainly not but a great many of them do.  So what does "Museum Quality" really mean here in the sharks teeth section on Ebay?  It could honestly mean almost anything from a truly high dollar super Pristine specimen to one that I would more then likely chuck in the garbage can. 

So how does one tell the difference between the two?

There is no clear cut way to explain to a new collector how to tell a high quality tooth from a low quality tooth.  The best advice I can give is to take a long hard stare at the pictures. If the description says, "Fully intact tip serration..."  and you can clearly see in the pictures that the entire tip has been rounded down then you can pretty much guess that your eyes are telling you the truth.   Perhaps the best thing to do is to simply ignore the title description and the vast majority of the hype that is written in the description itself.....most of this is meaningless and simply being used to draw your attention to the auction.  And again, I DO THIS MYSELF....so I will be the first one to point the finger at myself.....but....I don't use these words on anything that I do not feel is truly worthy of being called such a tooth....and by that I mean I will not use "Gem Quality" on a commercial grade tooth but I do see every last commercial grade tooth out there being called an array of overstated words.

So to sum it all up....there is no such thing as grading teeth.  Nope....not by anybody.  And just because you give the tooth to your neighbor Bob to grade for you and then you claim Bob as the leading expert in the grading of sharks teeth doesn't make it so. And yes folks, this was being done about this time last year. 

Pictures can and should speak a thousand words....and if you can't see the tooth....I wouldn't recommend you buy the tooth. You wouldn't buy a car in the dark would you?  Well then I wouldn't recommend you buying a tooth that is taken in bad lighting.   And worse comes to worse....if you get something in the mail that looks different than the pictures....by all means....insist that are returning it....and that goes for my auctions as well.

Hope this has helped some of you out....those that it did not....already knew this anyways.

Kind regards,

Garry Dye - Sydni816