PCGS made a big mistake?

And my son is 19, and just as coin crazy as I am, and he couldn't give a rat's rump about Morgan dollars, or war nickels, or 90% silver vs. clad, or any of that stuff. He collects topical themes and Soviet era Russian coins, and Buffalo nickels, and 3 cent nickels and 2 cent pieces. If you see the common thread in that, you're better than I am.

By the way, we have that one thing totally in common - I also don't get the appeal of Morgan dollars. They're far more common than almost any other coins of their era in BU. Nobody wanted the stupid things when they were current. They laid around in bags for nearly a century. Morgans were the Sacs and Presidentials of their day.

 

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It's like fantasy football, but for coins.

 

LOL, I actually typed that and deleted it before I made that post.

 

That is actually the PERFECT analogy! The kids can't seem to even watch an NFL game for its own sake without having a personal competitive stake in it somehow. It's "all about them", the kids for whom their "self esteem" was coddled to death. Now they can't appreciate coins or football, and they drive their BMW's as if they're in a stinking SCCA event 24/7.

 

That's what may bring them into collecting , but I've seen younger people start out with high grade moderns , and ultimately get interested in older coinage . I imagine most collectors who start with them , new high grade coins , will go on to older coinage even if they stick with modern commems . Just give them 5 to 20 years .

 

I'm admittedly confused.

ANA labels for PCGS would apply for any coins submitted at the ANA show. I get that.

ANA labels for NGC would apply for any coins submitted at and purchased during the ANA show. I get that, also.

What I don't get is why this matters. At first, I thought the point was that people were mailing coins into PCGS to get the ANA label, and PCGS said okay without a receipt, but later in the thread it said ANA labels were only awarded by PCGS for coins with a receipt from the Mint, which would imply they were purchased from the Mint at the show.

So, this is what my understanding boils out to:

PCGS awarded label to (both):

Coins purchased OR submitted at the show.

NGC awarded label to (either):

A) Coins purchased AND submitted at the show.
or
B) Coins purchased at the show.

A implying that coins would only get the label with Mint receipt from the show at the show, while B implies they could submit coins with Mint receipt from the show by mail.

If A, that's important, since people could go how and avoid the grading line at the PCGS booth, but not the NGC booth. If B, unless coins were available for purchase before the show, then they're basically the same.

 

Yes and it wasn’t their first mistake.

It is a shame that in search of trying to gouge as much money as possible from the collecting community these “special labels” came to being in the first place.

With the latest stunt that PCGS did with the gold Kennedy half dollar getting a special “A.N.A.” label on the holder when the coin didn’t even have to be bought at the show (just graded there) reinforces the theory that the special “labels” have no meaning or value (just a way to milk the collector out of some money).

I like the old saying, “buy the coin not the slab”.

 

Gotta agree. This is a public forum and once you start a thread you don't have any control over what people are gonna say.

 

Well Rick, I am sorry I took a dump in your thread. But obviously the discussion has been very worthwhile and I at least have appreciated the divergent views expressed.

 

V. Kurt Bellman:
"...He opined that this generation
will not ever
be taking advice from the old
guard..."

Why should they? Boomers did the same thing when they were 20/30somethings. They chased world proof sets, BU roll sets, Franklin Mint medals,
NCLT coins (seemingly issued in the name of any rock in the ocean that got mail delivery), 1960SD cents, 1950D
nickels, silver art bars etc. A collector
today could spend a few years topically collecting the Great
Expectations of the 60's and 70's.

Only the forms and methods
are different today. It's still "all
about me" and am I rich yet?
Why is this taking so long!

 

Everyone who seems, ohh, forgiving (?) of PCGS here makes me wonder. There was originally supposed to be a HARD ceiling of 2,500 coins sold at the ANA show. As events transpired, that was changed to just fewer than 1,500. There are now well over 1,500 slabs marked as if they were among the ANA show sold coins. ABSOLUTELY EVERY ONE of the "bogus" ones is in a PCGS holder, every bloody one of them. In fact, the mathematical MAJORITY of PCGS ANA slabs are "bogus" in this way.

PCGS? The "gold standard"? Not on any planet I've visited! The pinnacle of dealer-centric cons, maybe.

 

I still like and accumulate all that stuff, and so does my son.

Oh, except for the 50D nickels. I never understood that one. You forgot Barr dollars, too.

 

The only thing that's "bogus" about them is the perception of what one thinks the label means. They still contain a gold Kennedy commem...which is perfectly authentic, even if way over-hyped and minted in massive quantities. Within 2 weeks of the whole ANA debacle you could buy a PF69UC slabbed gold Kennedy anywhere you wanted to and in quantity for less than $100 over issue price.

If you like smoke and mirrors, of course you could "upgrade" to the (indistinguishable) PF70UC graded piece.

These ANA labels will go the way of the "Early Releases / First Strike" labeled coins, which in most cases demand no premium over regular label holdered coins. In some instances (as someone else mentioned) I actually would recommend avoiding these labels as coins are often rushed through in huge quantities by dealers to get these labels -- and some of the grading is "hopeful" at best.

 

I have found two of them from roll searching - now that is a challenge.

 

Maybe the rumor that someone
bought a new Catty with profits
from 50D rolls did some
pumping up?

 

J-U-S-T CAN'T hit the 'like' button!

So, hard to resist!

 

Oh no, sir, have you no sense of history and historical artifacts?

Nothing says "history" to me like knowing that the coin in the holder I hold in my hand was originally bought by someone who slept overnight on hard concrete, in their own filth, while I slept like a baby in my nice comfy pillow-topped mattressed bed right across the street in luxurious slumber, after which I casually sauntered across the street, after my sumptuous breakfast, and helped ANA staff deliver the bad news to well over half of the morons in line for three days straight.

It has it all - history, economics, elitism, all the truly important things. I can't get that authentic artifact from PCGS, only from NGC or ANACS.

(Wow, I just read that back. That's pretty snarky, even for me.)

 

Nothing like free fecal bacterial contamination as an added benefit to a collectable coin.

 

Yup, just like the British pieces from the Plantagenet kings era. Nothing's ever new, just recycled. /sigh