PCGS favors "big name" dealers?

man. a thread that actually makes me want to read. hahaha

all i can think of to say right now is that the price of collecting being predicated by the collector will always be questionable. ive bought coins to deal but not as many as are going into my collection. does that equally make the R3 1794 liberty cap and 1882 S morgan that i keep more valueble?

i dont know very much about TPGs. after a year+ of collecting again i would only now begin to say i have a few coins which i could see myself getting graded. ive heard dealers complain about the grades theyve gotten from TPGs in stores and at shows. something like the OP could be going on but i guess i just dont pay enough attention to see or not see it. that and i guess TPGs and EAC doesnt mix a whole lot either.

 

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Just curious, I am new to sending to graders. If I send a coin off, I get a unique certification number, say a MS64. If I sell this MS64 to a big dealer, and they receive it back an MS66, they can sell it for bigger bucks. I think that is what you're saying. My question to the OP is: If it is the same coin, how can I trace my serial number on my coin to the same coin the big dealer has submitted? Second question, should I break out my original coin, say the MS64, and give the loose coin or- give the sealed slab to the big dealer to resubmit and have resealed?
The link you provided in the duplicate post is a dead link.

Sorry for the duplicate post but this is a merely a reply to a duplicate -opening- post!​

 

I'm confused.

When a coin upgrades, it gets a new certificate with a different certification number. How, then, did you "check on the certification numbers" for your coins and know with certainty they were the same coins which bumped up two or three levels ?

I'm like Matt... I don't get it. Something seems wrong with this story.

 

You might get a lot of different responses at CU (I post there regularly but am not a dealer). Large dealers often submit bulk orders for grading but does that mean they get better grades? Sometimes it might but to say an MS64 goes to an MS66 adding thousands of dollars to the value because it was submitted by a large dealer is crazy. Paranoia will destroya.

I've submitted dozens of coins to PCGS and they've been graded fairly. I've bought dozens of NGC & PCGS coins from major dealers too - it might vary a touch - a touch at most. The bulk submissions might sometimes see 0.5 point added because of the order. To think that high value coins are given 2 points? Nuts.

 

By default, they don't attribute a coin unless specifically asked to do so. Extra service costs extra and adds to the turnaround time - as it should.

 

The bottom line is: It's an opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

Personally, the grade on a holder means nothing to me. Nothing at all. I am quite capable of thinking for myself.

However, the authenticity aspect is a bonus to me, on things I wouldn't know myself.

I refuse to pay extra for a coin that is in a holder that shouldn't cost as much as people want for it. I'm not going to pay for someone's inability to think for themselves. (It should be noted that I don't deal in high grade anything, most of my collection- and purchases- are of circulated coinage)

 

900fine - do they attribute the original serial number so the owner can trace the subsequent regrades as the person you were replying to was complaining about?

 

I believe the TPGS are NOT perfect, as humans are involved. But they will listen if there is a complaint and guarantee the grade, as most dealers will NOT do on raw coins.
TPGs also can detect altered surfaces as most of us cannot do wothout special equipment. As bad as PCGS and NGC can allegedly be, their helpfulness certainly can outweigh their defects.
I agree if someone collects high value coins or specifically collects high grade coins they SHOULD learn to grade for their own benefit. But it is not necessary, as we can all collect what we want, in the way we want to.
I have helped sell a $50,000 collection, high grade Morgans. Sent off about 20 CCs and 1 of 5 came back bodybagged. I looked at the coins, and saw some of the problems that would rend the coin unslabbable due to slight cleaning or environmental problems (damn PVC pages!). I learned a lot.
Some people just buy the slabs, more power to them.

 

They do not. When the coin is regraded it is given a new certification number, with no relation to the old one.
If you have access to the NGC Cert Verification, you can use cert # 365025-004 as an example. I submitted that coin for a regrade back in March, the grade on the Cert Verification now comes up as "deleted", only the date/mm and denomination are listed.

 

Interesting. Old serial number shows deleted and no way to find the resubmitted coin, if it was resubmitted. How about PCGS?

 

Here's a quote from Don Willis "Just like the regular service, when you submit a coin for regrade via Secure Plus you will receive a new certification number. If you already have a TrueView it will transfer to the new cert. #." PCGS.com I haven't submitted a coin for regrade with PCGS. So I don't know exactly what they list on the verification page, but they definitely change the cert number.

 

So let me get this straight. I couldn't just get a bunch of coins slabbed, and sell them, then later randomly see which ones may have been regraded higher...?
p.s. thanks for the info Raider34!

 

I only pay attention to copper, so what I opine about is in relation to copper wheat cents.

I chose one coin to focus on. Get multiples from different sources all the grades, plus genuine and varieties DDO's .. do some submissions, have dealers do some... so that I can learn the monkey business the OP posted about.

The market of top grades of each coin are driven by those who want the most perfect example they can get. and there are a lot of them. everyone who collects coins appreciates a perfect example, right ? Obviously..

Now there a couple of things that happen, guys will bid up top pop coins to add them to their registries. A competition! Nobody ever cheats in a competition now do they?

Then.... Someone like the OP submits or puts back out into public some new coins or a long lost roll or long ago hidden away slabs and all the sudden what? a saavy dealer notices that the new coins look a lot nicer than ones in his case with a certain grade. So of course!!! he resubmits them, he knows who is who, he sends a heads up, lets em know what is coming... for sure it happens, it would be foolish to say it doesn't.

I think it is one thing when you are goofing around with $100 coins, quite another when you get into the multiple thousands. and those expensive coins probably should be handled with 10 times the scrutiny that the $100 coin has, yes.. no? capiche?

It's that whole, you have to pay before you can play sort of thing. It is exists everywhere. whether right or wrong... it's life, and whoever said life was fair? Maybe think of it as a game, think of it as political, think of forming a Political Action Committee, maybe join the club, maybe form a different club, maybe threaten a boycott, try a hostile take over, join a convent... Whatever...

 

Using just the cert numbers, no.

 

That's correct.

Notice he said "using just the cert numbers". Sometimes, one can be reasonably certain that a given coin is the same coin based upon certain unique imperfections. Sometimes, on high grade / high value coins, the auction houses refer to these minor blemishes as "pedigree markers", since sometimes folks like to trace an individual coin's history back through the ages. Individual coins can have some interesting stories !

 

I saw my first slabbed coin in 1987, it was something of a novelty to see a coin encased in hard plastic, you just knew they were on to something. The ANACS Photo Cert’s had been around for awhile and collectors swore by them, so the transition into the new acrylic plastic was natural.

Since then, I have seen both services go through learning curves and subjective grading styles. The grading boom hit along with bullion and numerical grades became more important to collectors than the actual authentication of the coins themselves.

The “crack out” experts realized these anomalies in a particular type or series and years down the road have capitalized on getting a coin to re-grade at a higher level. They have made it a business cracking out 1,000’s of coins that have potential and gamble that they will cross or be returned one or even two points higher.

The services “claim” that the graders and finalizers do not know who’s coin they are looking at. There maybe instances where green boxes of ASE’s are dumped on the graders and they might have a clue as to whom it might be, but then again they really don’t know for sure.

The “guarantee’s" of the a fore mentioned companies are still the best in the hobby, they have evolved to fit their business plan, but it is better than just words on a piece of paper that is never honored.

If PCGS was not concerned with honoring their guarantee, they would not have brought a lawsuit against submitters who have altered coins. They are attempting to alter dubious sellers of manipulated coins. For now, they are the protectors of this hobby, either you accept their model or just avoid them all together.

With today’s current situations, you have to put your trust into someone. My trust is with these two companies and I wish them well in the future, not only for me and my fellow collectors, but also for the next generation of coin collectors as well.

 

I remember the days when you studied coins, attended shows, read books, and learned how to determine, to some extent, how to grade a coin without the help of a TPG (There were none when I started collecting in the late 1960's). You spoke and shared your potential purchases with other collectors and then made your own determination on the grade and value. I don't blame these coin grading factories, they must see quite a large volume of coins daily, and probably don't give much attention to more common material. The more they grade and push out the door the more money the firm makes. Remember, as I have seen on this site before, "Buy the coin not the slab its in".

 

Precisely.

Why?

Why do I "have to put [my] trust in someone" other than myself?

Reason dictates to me that if I am to spend money on something, I MUST make a determination of that thing's value. I am, after all, exchanging a store of value for it.

Since it is I who is ultimately to bear the responsibility for the outcomes of that decision, why should I ask, or for that matter ALLOW, anyone else to make it for me?

No...I really DON'T have to "trust someone". I'm quite capable of trusting myself.

What? Someone with 40+ years of experience as a numismatist is suggesting I should pay more attention to the quality of the coin itself than I do to a profit seeking stranger's assessment of it?

What a silly suggestion.