Dear Collectors: As a dealer Sanibelshellers.com will tend to undergrade alot versus many dealers out there. We do not believe in the" GEM" stamp for anything that comes from nature. We as human beings all have a pimple, birthmark or some flaw and are not "Gem or perfect!. Shells under a stereomicroscope will almost certainly show some flaw. These conversations go on and on and no I must admit we do not take pictures of every angle of a shell as a dealer. We use front and back mostly and include other imperfections in the description. We never normally use better than Near-Gem in our grading. Many customers that come to our website may be discouraged by that ,but I bet our grading is often better than other dealers who constantly misuse the word" Gem" Infact we offer a 100% money back guarantee on all our specimen purchases with no problem for the collector to receive credit or a full money refund. If we had to take picture of three or four angles of each shell, the time that would take would cripple us in getting a large variety of shells onto our website on any given day for our customers. If we do not post new shells everyday we do not make sales as a business as most collectors do not even hunt through the whole website to see what we have. Collectors go strictly to their families of interest. Also we post the shell that the collector will receive on our website versus saying it will be a shell just like the one pictured. The bottom line is that grading is what you make of it and there appears to be no industry standard. Besides, in the shell business very few dealers even communicate with one another, let alone be friendly to one another. Maybe that is why there is no "true grading standard anyone can argree on! Fredric Sanibelshellers.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [log in to unmask] - a forum for informal discussions on molluscs To leave this list, click on the following web link: http://listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=conch-l&A=1 Type your email address and name in the appropriate box and click leave the list. ----------------------------------------------------------------------