Quota Flavio Favero <[log in to unmask]>: > My humble opinion is that you could go to make confusion with the grading > of the dealers who usually determine the shells with the same method. > You could have a found shells for example with growth marks or defects but > precise (obviously) data, thus you grade with GEM, but when you exchange it > with a guy, he thinks that your shell is perfect..... No no, maybe I have not explained my idea well. This proposal for grading DOES NOT SUBSTITUTE the shell quality grading, but just ADD an information about locality data. Therefore in a shell list you will find two columns with grading: one for shell quality and the other for locality data quality. In this way there is no confusion. To Andrew: words, numbers, letters, it is not important what you use to identify a quality level, but that all people know what the different words, numbers, letters mean. And of course it is true that "as with dealers' specimen grading, it's only as good as the assessor's competence or honesty", that is the first step. Using the same words now used for shell quality has just the advantage that everybody already associates an idea to that words. Best regards, Paolo Paolo G. ALBANO Bologna, ITALY E-mail: [log in to unmask]