Quote:
|
Originally Posted by airedale In a 1988 letter to coin dealers about past abuses and PCGS's new standard |
Which is exactly what I suspected and why I asked. PCGS didn't even exist until 1986. That letter and those comments were written as part of advertising campaign promoting the new service - PCGS.
You see, up until that time there were only two grading services - ACG ( Accu-Grade ) and the ANA Grading Service. The ANA service of course was based upon the official grading standards of the ANA which were first published in 1977. But in '86 the ANA Board decided to change the standards. They all agreed that the older standards were much to lenient and that they needed to be tightened up. So they changed them and made them more strict. Coins that had previously been graded by ANA standards and deemed to be MS65, overnight became MS63's.
That's how that letter came to be. It actually had very little, if anything to do with the standards in use by PCGS - it had to do with the standards established by the ANA, and then changed to be more strict. Quite the opposite of what most folks think of when they talk of changing grading standards.
