Now to let you all know first off, I am NOT submitting any coins to PCI but I may be at an auction that has several coins graded by what I believe is the older PCI grading service. My question is for those of you in the know, how do you think their grading compares across the board to NGC or PCGS? What I mean is if a PCI coin is graded say MS 66, do you think it would grade the same, one grade less or way low if unslabbed and sent to NGC or PCGS? I want to have an idea what to price coins I may bid on so I don't overbid just cause PCI's grading might be high. Of course I will try to look at as many coins as possible before the auction to see how good they really look but it appears preview time will be limited and there are a lot of coins.
I sent a damaged coin to them and they did not grade it- they do seem to have at least some standards
i think the older PCI graded coins are fairly accurate. the slabs themselves have been known to tone coins. that can be either good or bad depending on your like or dislike of toned coins.
I suggest treating PCI graded coins as raw. I own a few accurately graded coins in PCI slabs, but also three total misses: -- A 1900 Indian in an MS64 Green Slab. PCGS body bagged this one as questionable color. -- A Pan Pac Half in a AU58 cleaned "red" slab. PCI totally missing an obvious scratch on the coin. -- A 1984 Barber Quarter in a Green Label PR64 slab. I convinced myself that the scratches on this coin were on the holder. They weren't. It was about a $500 mistake. I can post photos of any of the three coins on request. So a PCI coin graded MS66 could come back from NGC or PCGS as anything from MS66 down to AU details, depending on who they had grading at the time.
Holder Here is a pic of the PCI holders on these coins. Not sure how old these are compared to the new ones I saw online at their website.
My feelings about them are that they are NOT a basement slabber, but nowhere as consistent as PCGS or NGC. Like ICG, figure that a good percentage of their coins are overgraded, and that the coins will sell for far less. That is a possible benefit, if you cherry pick a nice coin in a PCI holder that you like, and consider fairly graded, or under-graded. However, they're not taken that seriously as the big two are.
The auction photos. Like I said, I don't know how old that is and until I can look at it in person the day of the auction I don't know what's on the back.
It's NOT old. I do know all the old PCI slabs and this isn't one of them. PCI went out of business in late 2008, the equipment shells etc were purchased and became DGS. DGS went out of business in 2010. They sold the equipment, shells etc, and the new owner brought back PCI in Aug 2010 with a copy of the first generation PCI green slabs. They only lasted for one month and then they closed down. None of these companies issued a slab like the one pictured. I do know the 2010 PCI owner was trying to sell the equipment again so this may be yet another new incarnation of PCI under it's seventh owner.
woah, that is news. I had no idea they were back up and running. I have had a few PCI slabs in the past currently the only one I have is a gold label ms65 micro S dime which in reality is no better than 63. Interesting that they have ebay compliant holders? not sure what this means unless they are working towards what ICG and ANACS did to get included as slabbed on the bay.
FWIW, I have heard nothing about PCI being "eBay compliant", but then I am not exactly sure just what "eBay compliant" means. Regardless, PCI coins are all considered raw as of the last time I heard from eBay.
I would assume by ebay compliant they mean an online certification verification. I can see where that would be a problem because they probably don't have the records from the past six owners. An if they do they are probably in different formats etc. Trying to put it all together in one online DB is going to be a nightmare. Of course this assumes they are still operating. It has been five months you know.
i remember the green label grading was good but most of the gold label grading was a joke. wonder whos grading there now?
Only the green border with the 10 digit serial numbers, te green borders with 14 digit serial numbers was so so and the green borders with the 9 digit serial numbers was not good. And then you have the problem that the person Dominion grading service sold all the suppiles and equipment to brought back the green border 10 digit serial numbers but now the grading was NOT good. So you have to be able to tell the two different green border 10 digit slabs apart. So it is a lot more complicated than green good gold bad. One reason the gold label slabs developed such a bad reputation was because when they first started using them they continued the old practice of putting problem free coins in one label and problem coins used a red label. But fairly quickly the dropped the red border labels, but they didn';t stop slabbing problem coins. They simply put problem free and problem coins in the same gold bordered label slabs and didn't mention the problems.
