900fine

Agreed. That's Hard Math, and hard to dispute.

And here's a key notion... "estimated probability of the upgrade" requires a great deal of numismatic skill.

This whole "crackout game" should be played as a game of skill or not played at all.

I used to look at The Numbers... I would look for a big break point on Price vs Grade (i.e. MS64 $900, MS65 $4,000). I would buy the lower grade, crackout, submit, and cackle "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!! I'll be rich ! Do you hear me ? RICH !!!!"

Until the coin came back the same grade as purchased.

Or lower.

Very, very few slabbed coins are upgradable for the reasons stated in this thread. Everybody in the world knows about The Crackout Game, so most of the slabbed coins are thoroughly picked over. It requires Strong Eyes to spot an upgrade.

rlm's cents

Several years ago. It is called CAC.

Just going through Lincolns 1909 - 1919 (I stopped at 1919), every date has at least one grade jump where it is VERY profitable to resubmit. Most have several grades in multiple colors and that does not even count getting an upgrade on the color.

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pappy-o

This is exactly why I don't have many slabbed coins & mostly collect silver & gold proofs from the mint , if I receive a beautiful coin that looks great why do I need a third party to put a number on it. I'am a collector so could care less about what a grader thinks , I think grading is strictly business & dollars and cents oriented , if you are a seller/dealer then I guess grading companys are a necessary evil , just my 2 cents worth : )

Cloudsweeper99

If the premise is true, and it probably is from the expert observations here, then over time the market prices for coins at a particular grade should drop closer to the price in the next lowest grade to adjust to the liberal grading. So many coins slabbed as, say, MS66 that deserve MS65 should begin to sell closer to MS65 prices. Maybe that's a small part of the reason why prices are dropping. People ARE buying the coin and not the slab.

It is also an incredibly short-sighted business practice for TPGs to vary grading over time to match what they perceive as market conditions. All they have to sell is their expertise and consistency, and if either is doubted by the customer base, the brand name could suffer permanent damage.

mikenoodle

In my OP, I said "if not all" because I was talking about the "logical conclusion" of this scenario. An eventuality, not something I see on the immediate horizon.

I stated that if things continued in this direction, then eventually a majority if not all will be in over-graded slabs.

oh, an BTW 900, you can call me Mike (or Noodle) not that I am insulted by being referred to as the OP, but it is a little more familiar this way.

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900fine

Perhaps another point of clarification : should we distinguish "overgraded" from "low end for the grade" ?

Let's define "overgraded" as "off by a full point or more". We already have a majority "low end for the grade".

The reason I don't think a majority will eventually be overgraded is because the Peter Principle affects some issues less than others. Low end coins get less push from the Peter Principle because there is so little driving force to submit over and over and over, which is required for the eventuality of residing in a coin coffin (i.e. overgraded). The great majority of coins are in this category.

Which suggests that the greatest driving force is for valuable coins... unfortunately, the ones where 1 point of overgrade means bigger financial loss. All the more reason to grade for one's self (not surprising).

Which suggests there's a greater chance of valuable coins being eventually overgraded, and thus a higher percentage overgraded at any given time. Comments, anyone ? Hmmmm.....

Right-o ! I used OP to refer to the text, not the person. But yep "Mike" is good !

mikenoodle

I think that any scenario that provides for the virtually infinite submission of coins to TPGs is something that not only behooves the TPGs to espouse, but is something that they will lobby for within the hobby whether overtly or covertly.

Ergo a grading standard that for lack of a better term, ebbs and flows provides for the constant re-grading of coins is in the TPGs best interest.

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900fine

There's a lot of truth in there.

And since folks often make decisions not from facts, but what they think are facts, then rumors, fuzziness, and vagueness favor the TPGs / multiple submission syndrome.

Conder101

Those who have commented that a marginal coin may not be worth resubmitting, and definitely wouldn't be worth resubmitting multiple times are missing one thing. Who ever said the multiple submissions would come from the same person?

Take that theoretical AU Indian. If he can get it bumped from AU to MS-61 there is a $70 upvalue potential. So he makes his $30 shot and fails. Takes has $30 lumps and sels it off to the next guy. This guy loks at that $70 possibility (and not knowing it has already been attempted) and takes his $30 shot and fails. Takes his lumps and sells it to the next guy. This keeps repeating, no one taking more than one shot at the upgrade until after say a dozen attempts it finally succeeds. Now it is overgraded in a holder so no one takes any further upgrade shots. But the service has been pais $360 so far in grading fees for this $230 coin. No one person in his right mind would have submitted that coins a dozen times, but a dozen people in THEIR right minds would and eventualy the coin winds up in a coffin. And this process keeps repeating for other coins as long as there is a fair to moderate, sometimes even just a slight chance, that the coin will upgrade.

The services tell you they have graded millions and millions of coins. How many of those millions are repeats? Going by their figures roughly one out of every 7 PCGS slabs should be a rattler. Almost one out of every two should either be a old green label (1990 - 95) or a new green label (95 - 1999) Yet in the market I see a sea of blue labels and most of those being with the barcode on the front and no coin or series numbers, a figure which should be one in five slabs. There aren't 20 to 25 million PCGS slabs out there, it is the same 5 to 10 million coins being recycled, regraded, reholdered, crossed, crossed back

And like Mark said, over time the overgrading becomes accepted, and the overgraded coins in the slabs DO become what the new "standard" is. We tell the newbies they need to learn to grade and the way to do it is to look at a lot of coins graded by the big boys. But if the standards have slipped what we are in effect telling them is to adopt these overgraded coins as the new standard. It then just sets things up for a new round of gradeflation.

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