Must read! Yelp reviews of PCGS

I've lived through a horrid yelp situation, and had to work really hard to fix much of it. Thankfully yelp also has a process to weed out bogus reviews.

At any rate, the only things generally said are from the few people who have a bad experience. The other 99% never take the time to write about the good things, and when you see them you can be certain that the business had a hand in boosting those ratings. There are many ways to 'direct' your loyal fans to review your site and boost your star count. Granted those are real reviews from real customers, they just had to have proper coaxing to make the effort to post.

A lot of my turn around came from posting statuses on Facebook with a link to my yelp page and just asking my Facebook fans to review their experiences.

 

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In vegas in know there have been yelp terrorists where people try to extort money or they threaten to leave bad reviews for restaurants on yelp

 

It sounds totally unacceptable at first. But just remember pcgs and ngc are not just grading companies. They are also "grade insurance" companies with serious and actual buy back and cash for downgrade polices. So $4,000 sounds like a lot but if the grader makes a mistake on those coins you are talking major cash payouts down the line. Especially when you are talking a $400,000 coin. So I understand a 1% fee. You are buying insurance with the grade.

 

Make excuses if you'd like. This "insurance" was always a part of the grading fee and the reason you paid to have them slab a coin to begin with. If you don't see the conflict of interest associated with this business model, then I'm sorry for you. My argument is with the fact that it is in the financial interest of PCGS to cross coins and upgrade coins. This encourages gradeflation and further trivializes their "product" -- if they can't get it "right" on the first try, why should I have to pay them when I resubmit a coin and they change their minds and raise the grade? It simply makes no sense.

 

Concerning the garage graders that do not guarantee their grades, why is it that the "PCGS Price Guide" numbers are always used when these "substandard slabs" are listed for sale?

That, in and if itself, should say something.

Don't get me wrong, I have had my own problems with PCGS but the thing is, PCGS is well respected in the grading community while I am just a weenie!

 

If pcgs indulges in too much gradeflation they will no longer be the industry leader and they won't make any more money because they will be discarded into the pile of worthless slabs such as segs, acg, gcgs, ani, nnc, nes, wcg, unc, nga, sgs, and pgs. So while the short term profit may be where you are claiming I believe they are smart enough to grasp the longer term outlook that if their standards drop too much then they lose much more then they gain. Their reputation. What do you think the gross income is for segs, acg, gcgs, ani, nnc, nes, wcg, unc, nga, sgs, and pgs?

 

What PCGS is doing is shady. That's my stance. I never said anything else about the worth of other (irrelevant-to-the-market basement) grading companies. NGC and PCGS (and less so ICG and ANACS) are the only consistently accepted reputable graders of USA coins (as of now anyway).

What stops PCGS from purposefully undergrading all raw coins to encourage resubmissions for "reconsideration" and then further collecting the 1% "fee" (in addition to the normal regrading fee)? There is no way PCGS can be blind to the difference between a "reconsideration" submission as opposed to a raw submission. The coin is still in the PCGS slab for the reconsideration. At that point in the game, they have a conflict of interest because if they upgrade the coin they will benefit financially (the original grading fee, the regrading fee, and the 1% "screw-you" fee). I'm saying this policy is ethically questionable. That's all.

 

If they undergraded too much people will stop sending them coins and send them to ngc. Again the most profitable course of action is to as accurately as possibly grade coins. And my experience is that corporations will always do the most profitable thing right or wrong.

 

Say no more.

http://www.pcgs.com/Statistics/

PCGS Crossover Statistics are a matter of public record and 37% just doesn't seem all that high to produce a "conflict of interest" argument.

I too perceived this "surcharge" as a more or less "paying the piper" or a "Grades for Sale" type of scenario but then, I have no idea what process the "reconsideration" service involves. I also have no idea whom PCGS might "insure" with or what the premiums are for insuring their "opinions".

Warranty claims amounted to $498,864 over the past 12 months. That's a fairly hefty "conflict of interest" loss if you're actually going to play that card and lets not forget, this is their business and they are in it to make money. Regardless of how their grades and slabs are perceived, if they were not making money, they simply would not be around.

Whine all you want, its a free country but the facts speak for themselves and I simply do not see any overall conspiracy theory involved with PCGS's published practices. I may not agree with their "opinions" but then I am not financially "responsible" for my opinions.

 

Why can't they get it right the first time? They can grade a coin today, and 3 weeks later decide it should have been a grade higher. If they would have just graded it properly in the first place they would have made less money. Crossover statistics are one thing, but as far as I know, reconsideration statistics are NOT made public. I mean, why would PCGS want to make public the percentage of coins that when regraded they didn't agree with their own previous assessment.

It's not as if that $498,000 over the past 12 months was just an unexpected expense. PCGS grades thousands of coins a day, for probably $20-30 a pop on average. Some of that cost for the 10 seconds they spend looking at each coin must go toward warranty claims, right? I mean, in what other business do people happily pay a company to look at something for 5-10 seconds (30 seconds total if 3 graders are involved) and pay them $25-30. Which, again begs the question -- why are they paying out warranties in the first place? -- Likely because they screwed something up or missed something on a coin they called "problem free". After all, they are the "experts" -- they are paid to get it right (the first time!!).

 

All this talk about "getting it right the first time" is based on the assumption that grading is purely objective. It just isn't. Even at the very highest level, we've seen time and again that a grading company will give different grades for the same coin. Heck, one grader will probably give different grades for the same coin on the same day.

Professional graders will tend to agree with each other, and with "industry standards", more than amateur graders or laymen will. But the very existence of reconsideration acknowledges that they won't always agree.

Whether or not reconsideration fees produce an incentive for TPGs to inflate grades, it seems clear that "the crackout game" must lead to grade inflation. If a coin is worth $1500 in 67 and $8000 in 68, and a particular example of that coin has a 10% chance of getting a 66, 80% chance of getting a 67, and 10% chance of getting a 68, that coin will get re-submitted again and again until it lands in that 68. And once enough have landed in their top-10%-chance slabs, well, hey, if you look at the range of coins in 68 slabs, the average quality is closer to what we used to call 67! Must be time to "tune our grading criteria to more accurately reflect market-accepted standards"!

 

You understand the game, but apparently most people don't. The gist of my comments in this thread are that "crossovers and reconsiderations are a fool's errand." If you're a dealer, then go for it -- milk out every last cent from a coin. But, for collectors -- the only thing you are doing by submitting coins for crossover or reconsideration is giving the grading companies money. If one enjoys throwing money away, then submit away.

 

Your opinion is based upon the fact that you do NOT own and run a grading company that handles hundreds of thousands of coins a month.

Each coin gets an approximate 5 second look. Some do not even get louped unless the grader believes that it visually LOOKS like a high grade, expensive coin.

As for what they do and how much they charge? They grade far more coins in the $12 range (Bulk submissions) than they do in $32 range (Standard submission). They also grade a literal TON of modern coins at the $16 level. "Some" of those $16 submissions can sell for thousands.

The problem is that "submitters" ONLY see PCGS from their personal perspective and their relative experiences with PCGS. IF, I submitted "thousands" of coins for grading, my perspective would be much different that that of someone that submits perhaps 8 coins a year and has a "strong" opinion on those 8 coins. Otherwise, why bother with the submission?

It's not as simple as one might perceive in that the hundred or so coins we, as collectors, evaluate for submission under our own terms and conditions and with our own personal opinions, simply does not compare with a business that has grade million coins in a single year!

To put it into perspective, take roll of Lincolns, put each coin in a 2x2 flip. number each flip. Grade the coin and record the grade on a separate paper.
Repeat but use a different roll of Lincoln.
Now add a third roll.

Now, go back and regrade the 1st roll, again recording your grades on a separate piece of paper.

Compare the grades.

Repeat for rolls 2 and 3.

Be totally honest and report back your 100% identical grading results.

 

I do not rely upon YELP for anything and I mean ANYTHING since 9 out of 10 reviews are bad.

 

Which gets at my message: Why do people pay NGC or PCGS ever for a re-evaluation of a grade or for a crossover? The only answer is "MONEY"! For collectors (not flippers or dealers) those services are a sham.

The absurdity of the inconsistency of grades will never go away because grading is inherently subjective. I am willing to pay a TPG the first time for an opinion on authenticity, approximate state of preservation (grade), and for the plastic holder to help protect a coin. I have never and will never play the silly crossover or reconsideration game. To each his/her own.

 

Not totally true in that I have several which I will submit for reconsideration. WHY? Simple. I think the coins are undergraded and I am looking for concurrence on "my" opinions for my own "personal" credibility.

 

Do my experiment and report back your results. Then and only then can you talk about shams. Otherwise, you're just blowing smoke.

 

I don't have "rolls" of any coins. I get what your philosophical point is, but it isn't my JOB to be consistent. Only smoke blowing I see here is your TPG apologetics.