If anyone is familiar with Rick Snow, of "Eagle Eye Rare Coins", he had a presentation on a new U.S. grading system that had some hype before the ANA started. Saw this post over on the PCGS boards from someone who attended, after reading it, it shares a lot of what NGC already does with Ancients. "I was in Rick's presentation. He proposed a system called "PDS Grading System". It uses ANA grading system (from Poor, Fair, about Good, Good ..... all the way to Perfect Uncirculated/Proof) as basis and add Planchet, Die, Strike grades on the basis grade. In other words, you have to grade the coin based on ANA grading standards first, say the coin is a Very Fine coin or it is a Choice Uncirculated coin. From there you add its Planchet (to me, it is contact marks but Rick included more factors such as Cleaning factors), Die (to me, it is luster but Rick also included Die states and other factors) and Strike. Each P, D, S can rank between 0 (the worst) to 5 (the best). You add these three number up and you got a new system. For a ample, VF (8:2,3,3), AU (5:0,2,3) etc." I don't see U.S. accepting this, even us ancient collectors don't care for NGC's grade style.
Grading is largely just for commercial enterprises (in my humble opinion). One usually assigns them for reasons of monetary gain. I abandoned grading many years ago (though on occasion I may include a grade in my descriptions). That has cost me many sales over the years to be honest, but perhaps there is more of a collector in me than a dealer. I truly believe that a coin should stand on its own merits, and those that we perceive. If we like it, buy it. Not the grade. If we dont agree on the price, pass it by. BUT, we cant get outside grading. Its there and always will be, especially so now that more US collectors are getting into ancients and with the commercial grading services as well. Anyway, in my experience a majority of collectors will still buy by grade and not appearance. As a dealer of many years I have countless stories. But I suspect I am preaching to the choir.
A large portion of "market acceptable" US coins have already been encapsulated by NGC and PCGS, so they are running out of tricks to attract more submissions. First they started by loosening grading standards, so that a coin in an old NGC holder previously marked AU-58 was now an MS-63, thus encouraging people to resubmit all the coins in older holders. Then they added variety assignations to their grades. Finally, they added + to their grades to try and encourage people to resubmit to see if their coins got the +. On top of that they've done their best to change their holders every 2-3 years (even if the changes are insignificant) to encourage people to re-send the coin so that it is in the new holder. I think PCGS has changed holders something like 18 or 19 times in the last 3 decades. The problem is that even with all those tricks, probably most people wont resubmit coins. I doubt your average collector cares less what version of the holder they have, and most probably won't want to spend the massive amount of cash to resubmit their collections to see if they'll get a + next to their coin grades. Probably only big time dealers with discounted pricing can afford to do that. So PCGS and NGC have to do something else to attract more people to resubmit. Therefore, it wouldn't surprise me if at some point they ditch the current grade and adopt the grading system above, thus encouraging everyone to resubmit all their coins once again (and get billed again) to make their coins "market acceptable" again by showing the new grading system instead of the old "obsolete" one. This is also why NGC has also moved to ancients and why the services have moved to things like grading foreign coins and also medals, etc., as well as offering "restoration services." They can see that unless they think of something else fast to keep the gravy train rolling, they'll soon be in financial trouble. So they are trying to expand what they'll grade and the "services" they offer. Anything to make a buck, I guess.
At a show that I rented a booth at a US collector came up to me and said "Now you have real coins", wondering why he said that, I asked him about his comment. He told me a story about someone he knew submitted a coin to one of those grading places(it seemed he knows the graders too) 20 or 30 times in hopes of getting it graded better by 1 number. I don't remember which coin or grade he mentioned, but he finally got it. He said he did this because that improvement was a huge increase in price. I can only assume that is not just an isolated case and one reason I stay away from modern.
Big dealers do that because they get substantial discounts from the TPGs. They can often submit their coins for like $5 while us mere mortals have to pay $25 or more. It's worth it to them to resubmit an MS-63 10 times until it comes back MS-64, because then they can charge hundreds more depending on the type of coin.
Most of us probably remember those days (before the Internet and digital photo imagery). It was desirable that written and spoken coin grades be consistent.
In the last fifty plus years there have been numerous proposals for ways to put a "number" on a coin to indicate its grade. Two of the more well known (for us old timers) are Sheldon and the NCI formula. A few other proposals contained numbers and letters such as 45 ACC. Think about this: If all that was needed to grade any coin was how much detail remained on the coin from the way it looked at the time it was struck (condition of preservation), the only thing a grader would need to be concerned with and judge would be the amount of lost detail due to wear on the coin. Strike would not matter, marks would not matter, etc. That is not the way it is. Let's introduce strike into our equation. Now the grader would need to judge two things and arrive at one grade. Now let's add marks into the equation. There are now three variables making up the subjective observation. Now let's add rarity and value. My point is that each characteristic of a coin is subject to interpretation. So instead of one characteristic that is pretty easy to judge - wear, there are several and each of those must be rated separately. When all is done, we have one grade made up of many subjective factors. The old TRUE technical grading as practiced at ANACS (only in DC) for internal records and at INSAB for opinions to the public separated all the factors so rather than AU-50 (one grade) a technical opinion for the same coin might be AU-58, weak strike, excessive bag marks. NGC Ancients and Rick's system draws on grading system proposals made long ago from several sources. These are bulky systems but the key is they attempted to separate all the factors that make up a grade (like the "technical" system) so that it is more precise and describes what the coin looks like in hand better than using a single number. When a coin's grade is broken down as appears to be Rick's proposal, there is less room for differences. For example: Strong Strike = A Normal Strike = B Weak Strike = C Flat Strike = D Now, I assure you from personal experience that I can take your non-collector Granny Simpson and show her an example of each of these coins and in ten minutes with 100 coins, she will not miss any C or D specimens and after about ten more minutes she will start to get the hang of the line between the usual strike and one that is very strong and exceptional. She would not need to know anything about value, rarity, or the various Branch Mints. Therefore, an "O" Mint coin with a full strike that is exceptional FOR THE DATE/MINT would still get assigned a "B" rating because it looks like a normal coin. Most of the problems we have with grading today (aside from ignorance) is due to value and rarity becoming a part of the grading equation. I think that is the main reason for Rick's proposal. Let's get strict old time ANA standards back - no trace of wear, and let the market determine the price for accurately graded coins. No more AU's graded MS-62 and MS-63. Good Luck! EDIT: Forgot to add, Rick grades the coin and quantifies w/# or letters the other subjective factors.
COMMON KNOWLEDGE! It depends on the coins and the customer too. I have not heard as low as $5 as that is too close to the TPGS cost for parts, time, wages. I have heard of $6-$7. Look, I believe ANYONE can get $10 Show grading at ANACS or ICG. So dealers should get "something" at NGC or PCGS even though their overhead is much larger. I've even heard from reliable sources that sometimes they don't even pay for coins that don't meet the minimum grade as long as most coins in the order do. Dealers are weasels (aren't we all). I've been at a grading table at a big show when a customer wants a price for 200 coins. When he was given a price, he said XXX offered to do it for X. It comes with the territory. Why pay more than you need to as it cuts the profit. If I were a TPGS I would get all of us to stop cutting rates to get more coins and hold firm - no deals.
Thank you. Thats exactly what I've heard. Maybe you are right and its more like 6 or 7, but it's ridiculously low either way.
To be honest, they have this grading system already. In sports cards, Beckett, grades their cards this way. Each area of the card gets a grade and then gets averaged out to reach a final grade. NGC has this practice with their comic books so it will be nothing new to them. The only company that haven't used this system yet is PSA/ PCGS, at least not to my knowledge.
All a new grading system will do is create new problems and new arguments. The current system has enough of both already.
When I buy Ancients, I do not look at, nor need a grade. I research it, look hard at the coin and/or pics, and see if it fits my historical targets. I don't need a silly third party slab rating to tell me what I want or need in an Ancient. Let them tell the mindless sheep what they need in Modern machined coins. This is why I stopped buying US coins.
Yes, we all have a little weasel in us, unfortunately. I've had two weasel dealers try to manipulate me into buying Japanese coins by giving (what certainly seems like) blatantly false information, usually preceded by "I think that..." to protect themselves. One said "I think this is a one year type." It wasn't. Another said "I think this is a sen." It wasn't even Japanese. They apparently didn't know that I can read Japanese (though I definitely don't look Japanese) and saw through them immediately. Both openly advertised that they specialized in foreign/Asian coins. I have never approached those dealers again. Sorry for the hijack vent session. That quote rang a little too true (for some cases).
They are a different kind of weasel . IMO, there is a difference between a lie and beating a deal down in price.
