Quote:
Originally Posted by mikenoodle  In the case of the 1st Strike Designation on the 1986 ASEs it was strictly done by whether or not they arrived at the TPG in a sealed (unopened) box from the Mint. Any packages that were opened by the customers were not considered for the First strike designation. | Mike, you mean 2006 right? Not 1986. And the TPGs still have the same qualifications as you mention above, except that there usually is a date limit. For example, if a coin is produced and ships between the designated date to the customer, which for this example we will use 1/1/09-3/1/09, and that coin is sent to the third party grader within this time period it will qualify - if a coin was shipped after 3/1/09 to the customer, it would not quilify for the "first strike" or "early strike" designation. The key being the date it was shipped to the customer. I have seen people submit coins to TPGs months after they had recieved the coin, as long as the box was unopened and the date on the box was within the time limit, and still qualify for the early strike designation. I also believe that many TPGs will even have their own time limits as to when they receive the coins as whether or not they will qualify.
Here is PCGS's qualifications... http://www.pcgs.com/firststrike/
Here is NGC's qualifications.... http://www.ngccoin.com/services/earlyrelease.asp
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