Hello,
We use Maldonado (8th ed.) for post-Colonial Brazil and Gomes for the vast majority of Colonial Brazil. We do basically everything listed in those reference works, but we do run into translation issues from time to time as the books are in Portuguese entirely. This is especially true with Maldonado. When someone pays for VP, and oftentimes even when they don't, graders and verifiers are pulling references works to attribute coins.
In modern (post-1970) that department uses Maldonado #s as a guide to decide what varieties are eligible, but they do not use reference #'s to attribute them, only descriptions.
In vintage, we try whenever possible to also describe the variety in addition to putting the Maldonado #, but we run into limitations when coins are details graded, customers ask for pedigrees or undertype recognition, etc. Our label can only fit so many lines of text, and this is especially true for coins that receive no grades.