Must read! Yelp reviews of PCGS

You guys tell me if I'm wrong. I understood that PCGS will not cross MS or Proof 70s but they will do cross at any grade. I was told that they want to see it out of the plastic before calling it a 70.

 

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That used to be their old policy where 69 had to be specified as the minimum grade, they changed it in 2014 to where you can put 70 as the minimum grade after getting a lot of requests to make the change.

 

There is a "major grading consulting service"? Maybe he means CAC.

Five million dollars worth over 20 to 30 years would be a fairly small time dealer.

PCGS is good, but I wouldn't go that far.

And how does the dealer know that he wouldn't have gotten the desired grades if he had sent them in himself? He may have just spent a few grand for nothing. As mentioned earlier there have been "small fry" collectors that have gotten windfall grades, and there have been major submitter that have had to submit a coin over and over until they are able to get it into the grade they wanted. Do I think a small collector automatically can't get a really favorable grade? No. Do I think a major submitter has a better chance of doing so? Yes, but it isn't a shoe-in.

 

Thanks baseball21. Great to know.

 

I think it would be a great idea to automate grading, at least for the modern coins. You scan the coin and based on the reading the scanner receives, it determines the grade based on coin surface. This would help eliminate the subjectivity, bias and inconsistency in grading, associated with various variables.

 

Great idea, but you're only 25+ years late. A company called Compugrade tried this in the early 90's. There were a lot of write ups in the numismatic publications at the time and I thought it was going to really take off. Supposedly, they had proprietary software, but nothing ever came of it and as far as I can tell, nobody ever tried it again.

 

The patent rights belong to PCGS and company.
https://www.google.com/patents/US5224176

 

People don’t want it or like it. Pure technical grading means a lot of ugly coins dragging down great ones. It failed before and would fail again

 

And that's telling, when a TPG owns the patent and refuses to implement the technology.

You know why, right? Because then grading would not be subjective, and the floodgates of liability would open. It will only work when everyone, you and I and all collectors, turn grading over to software. I don't know about you, but that ain't happenin' in my life.

 

If you are grading mostly modern coins where basically it's 70 or bust I can see how frustrating it would be. Them determining a coin isn't flawless isn't spitting on the little guy or being corrupt it's simply them finding ANYTHING to keep the coin from a 70. If you don't like that thought then steer clear of playing the modern grading game IMO

 

I seem to recall they have cornered the major patents to prevent entry until they are ready, and it will occur in the future. AI is leaping forward. I can see that a device that grades more accurately than a human, runs spectroscopic and fault detection to eliminate any suspicions of fraud, knows all of the PUPs for varieties and errors, and can do them without labor problems. I would start with the multitudes of graded "First Strikes" of something they could pump out thousands of slabs in a day without a lunch break.The millennial collectors will be coming into the majority and as numismatic knowledge was once entirely print based, now more electronic based, may go entirely to such.

 

Just as suspected: hit and run cowardice. Deflection is so predictable...

 

Yelp may just be the most worthless piece of garbage the Internet has come up with yet. Based on reading reviews of businesses I know, bad ones apparently can get good reviews and good ones are unjustifiably dinged.

 

PCGS coins sold on Ebay are commanding a bigger price for a respective grade of course NGC is next.

I wouldn't buy and coin in a Anacs or ICG slab especially if you plan on selling later.

Thanks James S

 

Yelp reviews are NOTORIOUS for being "hired opinions" that may or may not be based in fact.

For that matter, folks don;t usually bother with YELP when they have something nice to say. Only if they're good and irritated do they turn to YELP to demean some company.

Now I'll go read the reviews.

 

PCGS did it as well. Both PCGS and Compugrade debuted their computer grading services at the August ANA show in 1991. PCGS had announcements that it was coming n Coin World for a couple of months before that. Then shortly after the ANA PCGS quietly dropped the idea and Compugrade disappeared by the end of the year. So yes the technology has been around for 25 years. PCGS reintroduced part of it when they began their secure shield program. An important part of the system was the scanning of the coins and the creation of a unique digital fingerprint for each coin. That allowed the computer to be able to recognize the coin if it was ever resubmitted. That scanning and digital fingerprinting was brought back for the Secure Shield program, but since it is only done for Secure Shield if a coin is sent back in under the regular tier submission it will not be scanned and recognized. This is unfortunate because such a scanning program could be used to help identify stolen coins that are cracked out and resubmitted.

 

No, they don't. Patent lapsed because they didn't pay the renewal fees.

 

Interesting. I wonder if they chose to let it slide because of the realization that it was a no-win for them, since the aura of "subjectivity" is what protects them legally. Beauty will always be in the eye of the beholder, and (example) you and I will never always agree on what constitutes it. Nor would any other two people. The only solution would be to completely divorce "eye appeal" from the grading process, and if you ain't seen chaos yet you would then.

 

Maybe PCGS is just waiting to make it a zombie as they are the previous possessor.


From USPatent Office website:

Until recently, a patent which expired for failure to pay a maintenance fee could only be revived as unintentionally abandoned within 24 months of the date the maintenance fee was due. While a petition to revive an unavoidably abandoned patent could be made at any time after the patent’s expiration, the “unavoidable” standard was almost impossible to meet.

Recent changes to Title 35 of the U.S. Code effected by the Patent Law Treaties Implementation Act of 2012, Pub. L. No. 112-211, 126 Stat. 1527, eliminate the unavoidable standard and remove the 24-month time limit to reinstate an unintentionally abandoned patent. Now, any patent which has expired for failure to pay a maintenance fee can be revived, at any time, upon a statement that the delay in paying the maintenance fee was unintentional. 35 U.S.C. § 41(c)(1). Similarly, any patent application that has gone abandoned for an unintentional failure to file a timely response can be revived at any time. 35 U.S.C. § 27; 37 C.F.R. 1.137.

 

Maybe

Wouldn't matter - even if they had paid the 3 renewal fees it expired in 2012.

You pay the fees because the patent is worth it to you. Would have been less than current fees of $1600 for 1st renewal...

It was cited a number of times in subsequent patents, among the interesting ones are:

https://www.google.com/patents/US8661889 AURA devices and methods for increasing rare coin value

https://www.google.com/patents/US9367912 Coin grading system and method (which focuses on counterfeits)

https://www.google.com/patents/US8023121 Method for optically collecting numismatic data and associated algorithms for unique identification of coins. This one is assigned to CoinSecure Inc, which has a website http://www.coinsecure.com/intro.htm (although not updated since 2011).