PCGS forum deletes member accounts

After receiving direct suggestions to discontinue my ~$10000 minimum value lot submissions to the premier TPG by well established respected dealers, I submitted one 5 coin last lot of previously slabbed high value Liberty Double Eagles.

One coin had been previously labeled "cleaned", to which I didn't agree. It came back with a straight one grade higher. A MS64 with virtually flawless uniform luster fields came back UNC DETAILS CLEANED. A MS63 with beautiful devices, minimal field chatter, was graded AU 58. A MS62 PL was graded MS61. A MS61 was graded AU 58.

The "standards" are seemingly being altered, which can probably only be established by adjudication. I will resubmit the reduced grade coins, unslabbed, to establish possible lack of uniform grading standards. 5 out of 5 inconsistencies isn't believed a "fluke".

This is a stated 9 figure or greater value business, if high value coins can't be consistently graded by a firm, it may be time for changes.

JMHO

 

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63 to 58 is just how surface friction is viewed same with the other way around.

That doesn't seem to be PCGS which was quoted as they rarely do PL for gold.

The 58 actually was an improvement in today's market.

 

Indeed. In my book '61 is of lesser quality and sometimes appears more 'baggy'. Give me a comely '58 all day.......

 

Same here. 58s are some of the best coins now a days

 

Thank you for the "PL" correction, as I realized you were correct, and found the slab which initially contained a SEGS MS63 PL coin having presentation with greater eye appeal than comparable graded premier TPG "comps".

An AU58 Type II Liberty having a greater market value than a MS61. WOW!!

JMHO

 

Not sure about market value Rich, but appearance wise (at least with me) '58's trump (no pun intended) '61's..........

 

That's nothing new at all.

 

Name the dozens of dealers. I'm serious, I need to know who to avoid. I really don't want to buy coins from guys who are slaves to internet conspiracy theories. I've been collecting slabbed coins for nearly two decades and have never seen this mysterious cyclical change in grading standards.

And if it doesn't impact you financially, why are you constantly whining about TPG grading on this forum?

By that logic, PCGS has never paid out any money for an overgraded coin. Is that your claim?

Oh, so now the coins you collect suddenly have a 75% accuracy rate. Funny, you never mentioned that qualifier before.

That is exactly right, because grading is SUBJECTIVE!!!!!!!!

 

If it is PL, I'd send it to NGC or Icg or Anacs as they do PL on gold, big premium!

 

I got that same email, and I found it very enlightening.

 

Insider and I were in the first wave to be banned a couple weeks ago. There was a troll who would leave people a bunch of disagrees if you made him mad, so a few of us called him out over it. I made a thread calling him out, and he took me from 30 disagrees to over 1,000 overnight. It was laughable. He did the same to a few others who called him out too, so we reported him. He in turn reported us, for reporting him. PCGS got fed up and instead of researching and seeing what the problem was, they banned us all (about 6 people I think). Enough people raised a stink over it, they decided to let us all back but the troll (which is what should have been the outcome to begin with). This started people talking bad about pcgs (banning long time members, etc without a warning) and a few took it a bit too far. So PCGS then decided to bane another 3-4 longtime members without a warning. They have also been closing and deleting threads left and right. It's been a wild few weeks over there.

 

Crazy times over there. You forgot the part where the troll had an alt and took Insiders avatar before Insider was able to post again.
PCGS had a point to make and they said it in a big way. Folks over there are being really careful of what they say.

 

Same rules, perhaps as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. OK, where's the other house?

 

The troll was an alt, think about the posting style and who they targeted. It got legitimized by getting as much attention as it got and caring about disagrees. Trolls disappear when you don't feed them or interact minimally to show where they're wrong.

 

1.) What do you think market grading is? It is an attempt to rank coins by relative value, which necessarily considers prevailing market preferences and considerations. Markets and market preferences change. Coins that were once market acceptable and net graded may no longer be market acceptable and vice versa. Standards also tend to tighten in weaker markets. CAC has had some effect.

If there are no changes in standards, then how do you explain the following?:

(i) blue and purple copper with the putative "MS70" look were once routinely straight graded but are not usually straight graded anymore and the coins will not sticker;
(ii) the standards for PL/DMPL/DPL Morgan Dollars have unquestionably changed (and become much stricter);
(iii) luster was not as significant of a factor for richly toned coins (particularly at NGC) and deeply toned coins with muted luster were accepted at higher grades in earlier years;
(iv) PCGS no longer encapsulates most of those horrible AT silver eagles;
(v) changes in preferences for toned coins and color bumpage; and
(vi) take a look at Saint Gaudens double eagles and MS66 Liberty Nickels. The populations of the latter are smaller and more feasible to see substantial percentages of extant populations. There is a palpable loosening in recent years.

2.) PCGS's David Hall and NGC's Mark Salzberg have both admitted that their standards have changed at least once and that the services were still "learning" or were overly "conservative" in the early years. There is an interview with Salzberg on the NGC website somewhere and forum posts from Hall somewhere if anyone really cares enough to pull them up. I don't. Keep in mind, these comments were made well after the 1990 FTC suit against PCGS alleging a lack of objective and consistent grading and despite claims that PCGS standards represented "a permanent grading standard-a grading standard that will never change.''

3.) When was the last time you submitted coins to PCGS? Yes, inconsistency is an issue and can explain much of it especially when dealing with small sample sizes. On the other hand, if the tighter grading is widespread then it really does reflect a change in prevailing standards and not outliers.

4.) Gradual changes in standards can add up overtime. It isn't necessarily saying that the CEO/President of CU wakes up one morning and decides to change standards. There exists a limited number of graders. As they die and retire, they are replaced. With significant turn over, fresh blood creates plenty of opportunity for individual grader biases/preferences to take over and cause shifts in the application of standards. We can argue whether that it is a change in the standards themselves or change in the application of the standards, but the difference is really semantic. The net result is the same.

 

How does a company offer a warranty (i.e. guarantee) for coin certification only to retroactively amend the warranty to restrict the coverage bargained for in the submission contract (e.g. copper color guarantee, publicly disowned MS70 Ike, blanket declaration that more than 2 interval grading swing is a mechanical error and not covered by the guarantee, etc)? Are you suggesting that companies always act legally, always act in good faith, and never breach contracts?

 

Most of those who were "banned" were reinstated in good standing now. Meanwhile Don Willis, who may have had a role in the bannings over the years, himself quit!

 

From the recent bannings, most were reinstated. As for the large number of unjustified (IMO) bannings in the past under Don, many of those posters have come back with alts. There are several alts there now that are regular posters.

 

I’m glad I don’t spend any time over in that crap hole.

You have to be careful what you say in any dictatorial/facsist regime

 

Most of them I meet in shows in passing and say something like: “PCGS has gotten really tight on toned coins” or “NGC has gotten really loose on early coppers” and etcetera. Some of the dealers post here, and yet you have not once called them out for it.

Sometimes the trends are minor and only people who regularly send in coins notice them, and others might be so major that many collectors notice. But to say it does not happen at all is pure folly.

Because 1) they have corrupted the market such that US coins cannot hold their values on their own, and 2) their criteria for details/straight grade coins is woefully inconsistent in some areas.

How many times can you name where the grade guarantee was successfully used?

Because I was trying to paint the TPGs in the best possible light. Isn’t that what you want? Or does the fact that the TPGs are less consistent in circulated classic coins (an area which YOU admitted you have little experience with) scare you?

If thousands of dollars are on the line for a single point increase, I expect them to be consistent. Is that too much to ask? Especially since their role in the hobby is (supposedly!!!) to protect the consumers from overgrading?