PCGS order being imaged after delivery

Here’s hopin’. I confess I too was always a fan of the old “glamour shots” style.

I’ve mostly abandoned PCGS for NGC in the last year or two, however, after finding NGC’s Photovision service (but not their cheaper “Internet Imaged” tier) to be superior to PCGS’ offerings.

The fact that my submissions include a fair proportion of Ancients (which, as we know, PCGS does not encapsulate) was another deciding factor in my switch. Now NGC gets all my raw submissions, not just the Ancients. But I recently did submit an already-graded coin to PCGS for reholdering and TruView.

The images were OK. PCGS only gives you the TrueView montage and one large obverse pic, whereas NGC gives you the Photovision montage plus large individual obverse and reverse pics (and you get the slab shots on the cert page as well).

Weirdly, the PCGS TrueView of that Saint has (as of this posting) only a plain white background instead of the usual TrueView-branded wallpaper. Eh, that doesn’t matter so much to me, as long as I got useable pics, which I did.

 

Yes, and No. The photo of the Obverse and Reverse of the coin is the exact same shot, but some people (like me), like to have both the "TrueView" combined image with the PCGS logo background and cert number, and then separately the "CoinFacts" combo image version without the background, and then the separate no-background Obverse and Reverse. Yes, its really same pictures but depending on what you are doing with them, the white background / transparent .PNG background can be very helpful as a separate thing as provided by PCGS without needing to crop and drop the background.

 

That is a bit weird. I have coins that have OLD Trueviews, many years old, where they use what I call the "Coinfacts" version on the cert page, which which lacks the PCGS Logo background. But it's weird to me that your recent submission has this "problem", as really that should not happen anymore, unless they have change their process. I am making an educated guess that this is due to the turmoil and changes in the PCGS photo department since PA left.

What is EXTRA weird, not sure if you noticed this, but you no-background combo pic is of a different filetype than your Obverse only shot. Obverse is a .PNG "tzJl6d3_o0SXAjfh1Ilg7w_b2c5b.png" and the combo is the normal .JPG you would expect from the Cert Verify page "uFq5exwrK0WrXAaB6C9Y2g.jpg"

I download a lot of TrueViews, Coinfacts images, and all the sub-versions such as the "_Large" "_Extra Large" "_MAX" versions of the TrueViews. (there are lot more images available from PCGS than the 2 of each coin the Cert pages shows you)

I also find it weird they are using such a obfuscated filename "tzJl6d3_o0SXAjfh1Ilg7w_b2c5b" instead of the numeric only filename versions I find on all 100 or so of my TrueViews.

I don't think I have ever seen a recent submission that has your coins combo of "weirdness" as it doesn't follow the normal PCGS image patterns from the last few years.

Too many changes going on for my likeing!

Now you have me worried even more about my little PCGS test submission...

 

@lordmarcovan

Here is the version of your coin with the backdrop, but again, its named super un-helpful, so its not as easy to find as it should be:

I am thinking my little tricks of digging up these images is going to be ending in the near future...

 

yeah, I *thought* that PA was sort of a "key man" (a life insurance term) in the sense that he was considered sort of critical to the normal business operations by PCGS, but perhaps not. I certainly agree with you that PCGS and GC have a tight working relationship, and I would have thought him moving over to GC would have been handled in a way acceptable to all parties, but again, maybe not. He might have just left them hanging, or they just didn't understand how he kept the team running smooth over there and PCGS put themselves into some unexpected chaos by not appreciating him and his team. Doubt we will ever know, but certainly it had an almost immediate impact if you read-up on some threads here and also on PCGS forums.

I have not heard, but I supposed PA could have taken a few people with him over to GC as well, and really put the TrueView photo team in a bind...

Well, I hope they straighten it up, my coin images depend on it!

 

Wow, thanks!

I did not notice the different file types, as I have not yet gotten around to downloading the pics to create my own standard montage (merged obverse-reverse with slab label, against a grey gradient background).

This is an example of the montage I use:

 

I'm happy to report that my images are coming in prior to the coins being sent back to me. I am also pleased with the quality of the TrueViews:

In fact, my coins haven't even finished slabbing yet and some of the images are showing up:



First coin:



CoinFacts



So far so good...

 

Good to hear! (And see)

 

Maybe I spoke too soon.

This image is way too bright.



Reminds me a little of the old CoinFacts photos when they were just blown way out.

Hmm, what to do....

 

I don’t think it looks horrible. It can be tweaked, of course.

This is just me on my phone, with 45 seconds and some fiddling with the “adjust” menu on Lunapic.com. Point is, somebody who (unlike me) actually knows what they’re doing could fix that. (Though not on the cert page, obviously.) Nice coin.

 

Yeah, unfortunately that person is *me*. I'm starting to think your are correct, for a few reasons.

(1) PCGS TrueViews are just not a good as they were when Phil Arnold was there.
(2) PCGS no longer will do "in-slab" TrueViews as of Phil Arnold. Leaving. I had this done 11 months ago for ~80 coins. Came out great. With him gone, PCGS said NO, I even pushed it slightly up the food chain and they still said NO. (I understand this but it still is disappointing to LOSE features)
(3) Even if I could do the above, they wont image my NGC coins. YES, I asked.
(4) Every new coin I buy from somewhere other than GreatCollections would have to be shipped off to PCGS for images.

So, I am now realizing I might need to invest in some new camera gear. My old setup from 10+ years ago just wont work any longer. I need new macro lens, and the one I want means a new camera. Oh boy.... thats alot of "coin" money going into non-coins.

I'm going to mull it over until Black Friday / Christmas electronics deals start showing up.

Yes, this is one of the big downsides of doing it myself. But at least on the registry's I can upload them.

The other HUGE downside it the amount of time actually taking coin photos take. Its why I quit doing it 10 years ago. It is soooo worth the $5-$10 for PCGS to do it for the time savings alone...

 

I got a few more images back. They are timely (before coins shipped back to me), but the quality is just not there anymore.

I mean, this image has several problems: (1) Makes the coin look ugly as sin (no longer glamour shots). In hand, while not a gorgeous coin, its certainly not this bad! (2) Its not even rotated correctly to be level / upright. (3) Its the totally wrong color, like not even close. (4) Its not tack sharp, obverse right edge is particularly out of focus. Trueviews are just not crispy sharp like they used to be.

While this is disappointing, I sort of saw the writing on the wall with my previous submission, so I'm not really complaining. Its just means I've made up my mind to not renew my PCGS, and send my next few submissions into CACG instead. And I am also going to personally get back into coin photography for my personal coins.

 

Obverse Right side out of focus...

 

Never really thought about it that way, but yeah. Considering the vast volume they do, and the speed at which they have to do it, that makes sense.