Great Southern Coins

I don't understand.

 

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Paul, who has a coin graded, then removes it from the slab, and resubmits it. Expensive proposition, and to what end?

 

Mistakes?

 

Sorry, I meant Books...

 

Learn to grade.....that's not in caps.....maybe it should be.

Trust to your own eyes dear fellow. Not to trust from other eyes unless they agree with yours.....sabe?

 

If you don't know how to grade, even if you only buy certified coins, you'll probably end up buying some overpriced, overgraded coins.

 

What?? "Tall order" how? Learning to grade is one of if not the single most important gift a collector can give themselves, and this is fact.

Let me tell you what often happens to collectors who, instead of learning for themselves, rely on TPGs to do it for them... they end up with a collection full of dreck, and this is particularly true for those who also possess the "deal mentality". The latter is when someone focuses more to entirely on price as opposed to the quality of the coins they purchase, and more often than not such people end up with what are sometimes called "hot potatoes". These are coins, often questionably graded (way maxed out, are overgraded, display overlooked problems, have cancer in one form or another, etc, etc) that knowledgeable dealers/collectors avoid like the plague and are therefore priced well under where they should be. Coins are as individual as people; no two are exactly the same, and knowing the good from the bad is key to success. If you buy plastic, especially if also focusing on price, I promise that you will end up with coins like this; there are a lot of dogs out there in top TPG holders, my friend, and you can bank on this, one way or another. If you wish to build a collection filled with such coins, that's up to you, but when it comes time to sell, please don't blame the knowledgeable dealer for not paying up for what you (may have) paid down for, or simply not wanting them at all. Dealers, like the one mentioned in the OP, who sell such material would probably be the best bet (hint, hint).

I realize this may sound harsh, but in the long run its a lot less harsh than the alternative.

Yes, there are, but the very laziness mentioned in my previous post is, with all due respect, not one of them.

 

Very true ...some are DOGS for its grade...

 

No guarantee. Here is my MS63 CAC "dog" coin with no eye appeal whatsoever.

 

Do you think I'm just making this up? Believe it or not it happens all the time, and for the very reasons I've already told you, mostly consistency, but always money.... people like to gamble, and this is especially true when they can hedge their bets with knowledge/experience. Think about it.... X coin in, as an example, a 64 holder will generally sell within a certain range, yet that same coin residing in a 65 holder, due to the prevalence of plastic buyers can sometimes, depending on the type/date/mint, can sell for significantly to multiples more in some cases; is this not reason enough?

As to "what end", well, it sometimes ends with the previously mentioned "hot potatoes", but is just as likely to end when someone unable to grade for themselves buys the coin (unless it was, in fact, deserving, which sometimes is the case). It also sometimes ends with wasting money, but is all part of the game. With that said though, I suppose there's always the chance that gradeflation (look it up) will catch up and all will again be kosher.... until the resubmissions start, that is.

Again, this is all a game, and similar to how an athlete exercises in order to give the best chance of succeeding, smart collectors will exercise their minds to hopefully achieve the same result. Being a new collectors is like a player on the farm team trying to homer off a major league pitcher; while there's always that remote chance, it's probably not going to happen unless, over time, he develops the necessary tools. The more you learn, the better off you'll be, and it'd as simple as that.

 

I have had done it a few times in the past. Here is an example a PR64 to a PR66.

 

Yep, and if you blindly believe the price guides, that coin just gained $2800 in "value" by that move. Of course, that's not true, though. Either the coin was worth the money in the original holder or it was not. The plastic has no bearing on the value to someone who is buying the coin and not the label.

This is veering way far away from GSC, which is the title of the thread. I think someone should start a new thread to discuss this.

 

No, never thought you were making anything up. I'd heard of people doing this. I just didn't understand it. Now I do. I appreciate all the helpful info. And I understand now. I'm perhaps naive, but I tend to trust the TPGs much like I trust my lawyer or my plumber. Yeah, they all can make mistakes, of course, but they have a lot more training and are much better equipped than I. Having said that, I'd love to learn to grade, and have developed an interest in it. But I still think it's a 'tall order' to learn how to grade like the pros. But maybe not.

 

It is a skill you are supposed to learn as a coin collector!

It truly boggles my mind that someone would contemplate collecting coins without learning how to evaluate them. On the order of taking up knitting by only buying stuff other people knit. Collecting cars without learning how to drive. I.....I have no words.

This is the attitude that keeps sellers like GSC in business, providing a ready supply of marks who don't understand what's wrong with the coins they sell.

 

That's why I only buy--and sell--top tier graders graded coins. I'd never buy raw on ebay or elsewhere, though I do sometimes buy raw coins from a dealer I trust implicitly. I've always assumed TPGs were doing their job and doing it well.

 

You've assumed wrong. How many TPG mistakes do you have to see in these pages before you realize that the TPG's are fallible humans like the rest of us? Yes, over a large average sample you can trust them to be reasonably consistent. I'm not saying they don't know what they're doing - they very much do - but how would you know if they miss one?

I'm a better grader over the long term than any TPG, and a large plurality of the membership of CT can say the same thing because we have more than a few seconds to study each coin, unlike a TPG grader, and can devote a lot more thought to it. We can create threads here with the coins we've graded, and interact with those holding other opinions, and refine our skills in real time based on the input of others. We can grow.

Until you learn to grade, you are not a coin collector. You are a slab collector, buying art based on someone else's opinion of good art instead of your own. Buying good steak with no idea what good steak tastes like. Until you free yourself from dependence on slabs you'll have no idea what it is we actually enjoy about this hobby. You are selling your satisfaction with numismatics short, surrendering your right to derive pleasure from what you collect. Letting someone else do your thinking for you.

And making yourself a victim. Perhaps you haven't been burned yet, but it's almost inevitable. You will get burned, unless you're very lucky, and you won't know when it happens. Not because the TPG's are deliberate criminals, but because they're not perfect.

 

It's simple really...

 

Granted TPGs are not perfect. I've already said that. But looking at that large sample, as you put it, the TPGs do pretty darn well. If we look at a small sample, of course they don't pass muster. But then nobody does in that case. Having said that, you make some good points, Dave, and this is all good food for thought. I'm not a collector and have no interest in collecting. I am a dealer. I buy and sell slabbed coins and raw coins (see my previous post) and generally do pretty well. I cherry pick what I buy for eye appeal. I'm also an artist (you mentioned art) and photographer, so I have an edge there. One thing I am learning here--I have some slabbed coins in my inventory that I just can't get rid of. I guess I have to assume that these have been overgraded, and that prospective buyers can clearly see that.
One question--have you ever worked for a TPG? How do you know they spend seconds on each coin?

 

Fair enough - your additional skills put you in a better position to make smart decisions than most. All the same, by your own admission - you almost certainly diagnosed the reason for your languising items in inventory - you've bought duds which you likely wouldn't have acquired in the first place with a better feel for technical grading.

The statistics from which one can make reasonable assumptions about grading times are freely available in public filings by the TPG's (and in videos they publish) and have been public knowledge for a long time. We've been discussing it in various fora going back ten years and more. You can find out how many graders are employed and how many coins graded - the rest is math. By the most generous estimations, a grader gets about 15 seconds per coin. Most likely far less in the "meat and potatoes" Modern issues they grade by the bushel basket - new bullion mintages are their profit margin - which are balanced out by any extra time spent with more difficult Classic coins. And yes, I've discussed it quietly on occasion or two with former working graders (you won't see them publicly identifying, because of the crap they'd take on behalf of their former employers ).

As a dealer, you are probably a generalist and this does make grading more difficult because individual issues have their own grading ideosyncracies. All the same, even if for no other reason it makes good business sense for you to develop a better feel for grading.

 

They did a much better job 25-30 yrs ago when they first got started.