If NGC wants us to take them seriously, they need to stop lying.

This thread was a mistake. Discussions of slabs always lead to fisticuffs. I apologize.

 

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ohhhh...i bet i know what happened there...but i can't see a thing.


the ignore is pretty sweet.

you can hit a users profile, then on the upper right you'll see the option to ignore, follow, or report. ignore doesn't let you see anything they post.

 

I just came in to edit my post. I apologize to the member for the "D" word. @desertgem you beat me to it as I'm watching Regan /Hinkley and this post was still on my mind!

 

I think the post about tooling of bronze coins has plenty of merit. How to spot them and sharing one when spotted. I would like an Octavian bronze, but have been turned off by the prices and tooling.

 

IMO, this post was not a mistake. Posts as this allow learning to occur and modification of our personal standards. One member's scratches are another member's heavy tooling. We need to see others opinion AND that of the TPGS.

 

Thread wasn't a mistake for me. As a newbie I really learn a lot when you guys argue.

 

This was still the ancient coin board, last time I looked. For ancient coins, this statement is categorically, 100%, not true:

"NEVERTHELESS the "overgraders" at the TPGS's and their dealer customers HAVE SET THE GRADING STANDARDS for all of us."

Phil Davis

 

@desertgem Insider is by his own acknowledgement NOT an "ancient guy." That makes your address to "the rest of you ancients guys" a pointless non sequitur. Your attempt to formulate this as a sort of internal squabble is blatantly unfair to those of us who ARE "ancients guys" both professionally and avocationally.

Phil Davis

 

Okay this is probably a dumb question but what do you mean by tooling/smoothed?
Is it just some folk working the coin to make it look more like "new"? How can you tell??

 

Phil, no one is labeled specifically as a "ancient guy", nor an "error /variety guy, or any other type of guy. If members post is the VAM portion, I refer to them as VAM guys, and if they post in ancients, they are "ancient guys " at least for that post. Each member can consider themselves in many groups, but we are not differentiating any one that is a member. It is an internal squabble on this subforum "ancients", and to prevent anyone who didn't read the whole thread from commenting wrongly also was needed. If members do not want to see certain members comment, the "ignore" function is always available. If such prevents one "ancient guys " from getting an infraction, I am happy. Jim

 

@Ajax

Use this link

http://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/fakes/tooling.htm

 

@Orfew Very interesting thanks man.

 

Insider is a "coin" guy who knows many ancient dealers, has a few ancient coins in his collection, and who has been employed by two ancient coin dealers. When Insider's numismatic tastes mature more as he ages, he can better put the dozens of ancient reference books and tons of ancient coin auction catalogs in his library to better use.

 

Better yet, I think it is time to IGNORE the Troll again. I had "un"-ignored it before, hoping that its behavior would improve. Unfortunately, immaturity and poor behavior is a habit with this individual. There is no learning when people are wontonly insulted at the person's personal will. There are too many other great comments and "education" by civil members. Ergo, I agree with Desertgem. I am IGNORING this childish poster.

 

As many of you know I started at NGC in July. I do not recall this coin coming across my desk so I am assuming it came through before I was there. Thus it's difficult to comment on the coin having not seen it in hand. And it's 330 am and I'm looking at a small photo on my phone.

This coin was in the March Gorny auction where it was described as "vz" (EF) with no mention of smoothing or tooling. Over the weekend I'll look at the coin on a larger screen and see if I can track down the dies. A quick scan of coinarchives shows quite a few of similar style and perhaps the same dies.

Concerning grading, NGC uses a different grading scale then that used by strictly ancient coin dealers. So the coins aren't overgraded, just graded differently. This is something I am still getting used to after 25 years being a dealer. A coin I used to call Vf may now be EF. NGC uses a grading scale for ancients that is the same scale they use for US coins. So an EF coin had a good bit of wear (look at an EF40 Indian cent or other US coin), but for an ancient dealer an EF coin is almost uncirculated and shows very little wear. What an ancient dealer would call EF NGC calls AU or ChAU. Not overgraded, just a different scale. It reminds me of the difference between EAC grading of us large cents and slabbing services, or the differences between what CNG would call a hammered ENglish penny and what Baldwin or Spink would call the same coin. Just different standards.

As its late, I will post something I said in another forum earlier today......

On average we identify, grade and slab 2-400 coins per day, some days more. Until July, the NGC Ancients department was a 1 man operation. If a fake slipped through every few months I wouldn't be surprised, no one is perfect. I've followed the online discussion groups since the late 90's and I know how people like to catch fakes in NGC holders. I think I've seen 10-15 examples posted online over the years and heard of a few more. Of the 500,000 coins (just a guestimate as I don't know the actual count it might be a lot more) or so that have been slabbed, that's a pretty good average, far better than any dealer, specially when you consider we are a fun target by some dealers and collectors to see if they can get something past us. Today was a slow day as I was working on a few other projects and have only worked on 108 coins. 12 fakes didn't get slabbed today, only 2 of which are published online anywhere, 2 came out of major auctions.

More later after I get some sleep.

Barry Murphy

 

Well said ... but I still hate slabs



Unfortunately, defending my typical ancient coin purchase's wear, lack of style and iffy price-tag is usually hard enough!! ... but then having to defend the grading service's opinion would be a whole new layer of "arrrggghhh"

Oh well, this coin collecting thingy is supposed to be an enjoyable "hobby" so that's the way that I've always approached it ... errr, speaking of fairly iffy purchases, I happen to have an example of the OP coin-type (anybody wanna see it?) ... please feel free to hit the ignore button at all times, my coin-friends!!



... sure, maybe my coin doesn't have great style, but it' still a winner in my books



It's always quite refreshing to see Heracles facing left, eh?

 

Averages can be deceiving but any way we do the math, a 400 coin day works out to a minute or two a coin. Knowing nothing about the process of inserting coins, sealing and other administrative tasks, I can only say that the only way there is time to research a questionable item is if many of those coins were 'decided' in a few seconds each, possibly in bulk as might be done with a hoard group. It does not seem like a plan to avoid slip-ups.

I visited a local dealer whose knowledge of ancients was not high. He showed me a pile of coins returned from NGC without having been slabbed. A couple were (correctly) flagged as having active corrosion; a couple were modern copies; a few were marked as unable to determine authenticity. (Working from memory so I may not have the terms right.) It is this last group that will provide us with most of our problems. People who send in coins in the hope of authentication are likely to already have some question on the matter. I do wonder how many of the "12 fakes didn't get slabbed today" were the sort of thing we call "dangerous" and how many were the "usual suspects" (Black Sea Hoard, Slaveys, tourist fakes etc.). I suspect that the vast majority of the 400 coins were sent not for the feature of authentication/opinion but realizing that anything in a plastic box will sell for a premium due to the increased demand in that new part of the market that prefers plastic over paper (Sear certificates?).

Opinion: NGC made a decision in the very beginning that traditionalist collectors viewed as a slap in the face. By inventing a grading system making their product look 'better' than what was previously standard, the new idea appeared sleazy rather than professional. Grading ancients AU and MS alone tripped a first reaction, "These guys don't know what they are talking about." In coins, Athens was very slow and gradual when they moved from archaic style tetradrachms to new style. The almond eye was reassuring to the spending public who wanted to be given that good old money like grandpa had. I believe that a system either completely different (not using what I call 'fine and friends' at all) or being conservative (recognizing that not all coins have to be MS) could have avoided this negativity from the start. Obviously, following either of these paths would not have been successful since people would not send in as many coins for grading if the expectation were a label telling the ugly truth. We were told that the product was not marketed to the traditional wing of the hobby but aimed at new blood who did not have any idea that ancient coins existed or that they might own one. That is exactly how I got into the hobby c.1960. I had issues paying more than ten cents for a dime but the local coin shop had a dish of dime size denarii that struck me as a deal at $2. I was encouraged to handle them all (something we did not do with $2 dimes in that same store). That dish put ancients out there for a new market sector (kids like me) while the old guys asked to see the boxes behind the counter. I believe the dish of denarii served the same marketing purpose as the slab does today. It opened the hobby to new people. Today, I generally pass up dishes of ancients at my favorite dealers' show tables. I've moved up to the half price/discount box. Will people who the slab sellers brought to the hobby someday move into making their own decisions? Some will. Thinking back, I doubt that all of the kids fingering those coins in the dishes went into the hobby quite as deeply as I did. Some did.

 

G&M auction 236, lot 84; unsold at opening bid of 280 EUR, 7 March 2016

At first I thought there were new details in the drapery (on the slabbed images) but I think that is just due to differences in lighting and focus.

G&M's sell rates are very high (and often for considerably more than estimate), so the fact that it didn't sell is interesting and perhaps telling.

 

Plus, I'm fairly sure that it's new slabbed home didn't entice many bidders

... ummm, have I mentioned that I'm not a big fan of slabs?

 

I guess I stirred up a hornets nest!
Well here is a sample to rove my point, photo #1 is of a NGC graded MS-62 Salzburg AV 2 Dukaten Archbishop Johann Jacob Khuen Von Belasi dated 1571
Second coin is my 1587 coin/ from Kunker with their grade of fast stempelglanz=About Uncirculated!