Holy .... NGC just took PCGS behind the woodshed!

One of the many problems with Mark's letter is that it is claiming PCGS is suddenly a third world slabber, while NGC has remained the stalwart champion of truth, justice, and the numismatic way. The mudslinging approach of this diatribe is extremely off-putting, not least because of its slack manipulation of statistics and its overt and unsubstantiated insinuations.

The reality is that NGC's standards have changed and continue to change, NGC slabs problem coins, NGC overgrades, etc. The major 2 TPGs both have the same problems. Denigrating PCGS does nothing to enhance NGC - it only makes Chairman Salzberg look like he's throwing a tantrum.

 

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Exactly. I had my 1892 Barber Quarter that was in a PCGS MS60 holder that I asked some very respected members of the coin community about cracking it and submitting it for a new grade and they said not to do it as the scratch would probably make it a Details coin in today's market. Well the person I sold it to cracked it, submitted it and it came back a MS63 and the big scratch is missing in the TrueViews. Go figure.

 

Shocking.

 

Bondo........

 

I can't say I agree with that. I've sent a few coins in PCGS holders to NGC for crossover. (I liked the new scratch-resistant edgeview holders by NGC before PCGS followed suit.) Some did. Some didn't. And none were graded higher than the original PCGS grade.

 

Cross overs are an animal all by themselves. They both go ultra conservative with the grading since they have to do it through the slab and if they crack it and make a mistake they're on the hook for it.

 

Indeed, but it's also a problem with the buyer. Tru-views are nothing more than glamour shots, and even though they serve a purpose, shouldn't be simply assumed to be proper in-hand representations. It's kind of a damned if you do and damned if you don't kind of thing.

 

I would agree with you. I would never sell a coin using the TrueView images. They are simply a glamour shot of it. It's nice to accompany the TrueView with images showing how it looks in hand. But with the TV images, you at least have the coin documented in a central database. Also the quality of the images are way superior to what I have seen come from NGC.

 

Don't forget to send it to the paint shop for a fresh tone-up.

 

Cracking out isn't really the problem, it's not returning the cracked out certs so they can be deleted, I know I'm guilty of this as I have a couple hundred laying around or thrown away, granted not too pops but still they're counted in the census of that grade.

The TPG's started to pay like 50¢ (credit) for every cracked cert as a incentive to return them, I don't know if they still do or not

 

PCGS.com/cert enter valid cert # click the link that says this coin in coinfacts ...on top left where it shows pic click see other , I'm on the phone and it's a pain to do links

 

I was not a coin roll hunter back then - I was trying to complete sets by date and MM.
I would also ask you to see in my original post where I mentioned:

So we knew it was not valid for actual prices, but before the internet the Redbook was the only available source everyone readily could get their hands on so it became the "standard." Again though, we knew it was a standard with inflated prices. However, its value came in that the inflated values side by side on the page allowed us to make a comparison of how we should perceive ones coin's value as compared to another of different date/MM.

I also worked at a coin shop back in those days. The owner was my former science teacher who quit teaching to open the shop. So I had a pretty good idea of actual coin values anyway.

 

Actually there was no problem at all back then. The hobby did quite well before this shell game all started.
But back then there was a lot more feeling of a need to be personally responsible for everything. Wise people will always buy the coin and not the slab. The reason a lot of coins were cracked and resubmitted is b/c if you sent in a borderline coin enough times (where one grade up meant a big profit), then there was a chance it would eventually get the higher grade.

To add more weight to this issue, back when the slabbing started, I remember joking with fellow collectors about this sham and said, Watch, one day someone will be even more oily and make a business to grade how well the slabbers did their job!: This was a big joke b/c we knew the general public would never be dumb enough to fork out their hard earned money for this even more ridiculous sham. So now we have the CAC! Note: That is a statement of how we perceived the situation back then - it is NOT a condemnation of anyone nowadays.

If the slabbers were made accountable by stating specifically why they assign a certain grade to each coin, then the system would be a lot more legit. Qualifying exactly what makes a coin MS70 vs MS69 though would not allow them the wiggle room they enjoy. Let's face it, since its all objective anyway - is their really an actual difference in a perceived MS69 and MS70? I find it very interesting my coin dealer told me he has been comparing with other dealers for years and found that a monster box of ASEs sent in will regularly have the same percentage of coins returned as slabbed MS70. Coincidence? Uh huh.

Then lets get into computer grading shall we? The tech was there in the 90s. I used to work with a quality control machine that we would put a part onto the stage, walk the machine through the process of scanning many points on an item, and then it could do it by itself to evaluate the quality of any similar part we put onto the machine. This was in 1995.

Do we really thing that with even the phones in our pockets having face recognition nowadays that coin grading could not have been a science years ago?

The slabbers put big bucks into looking into computer grading systems in the 90s, and they even started using it to some extent (at least that is what I have read online). But its my personal opinion the slabbers saw another large opportunity looming.

If they put off the computer grading system's implementation (and all of them did), then after another 20-30 years when business was slowing from so many key coins being slabbed, the slabbers could again get paid all over again for the coins they already handled. How? I see their marketing scheme now..."Just how can you sleep at night knowing their MS690 might just grade MS70 if human error were not involved? WE now can remove all possibilities of human error!"

And then, of course, in another 20-30 years they can re-introduce it all again by claiming the programming algorithm originally used was not as efficient as a new one they came up with. So now that they upgraded the computer grading system to be far superior, they will once again take your money for the same coin.

And anyone thinking this is far fetched - refer back to the idea of what we used to know about how no one would fall for what we now know as the CAC. And... it was around a year ago, there was a new system starting up to try to grade the CAC system's evaluation! At least that one failed... for now.

Behold the future...

 

Great we don't even have to worry about seeing the coin at all anymore. As we all know that we can trust the labels and stickers provided by corporations to look out for us the collectors. Surely they'd never put their bottom line before integrity... lol

 

You forgot you need an abbreviation for exceptional plastic quality (EPQ) of the slab.

 

Then perhaps you had access to the Greysheet.

Computer grading did not work. All it is good for today is to ID a coin that has already been sent in (as long as every coin is imaged). That is impractical at the moment; however, at least one TPGS is photographing certain coins to help detect new counterfeits by repeating marks. Perhaps sometime in the future, a computer will be able to assign a grade independently of a human.

Also, Mike Fazzari (a columnist) and Steve Roach (former Coin World Editor) used a slab covered with stickers in articles they wrote last year to convey the future of verified slab grades. Yours is also funny.

 

And this is why I collect raw coins. There are plenty of distractions already without the TPGs

 

I'm thinking you have the right idea. I'm also thinking of giving up on this hobby all together.