GTG 1950 Franklin Half Dollar PCGS

Let's play devil's advocate. Maybe all of the dealers pre-TPG were really market grading all along when they sold slider AU coins as MS. That was supposedly one of the abuses that the grading services were created to address. Now they too have acquiesced in it.

The entire premise behind market grading is pricing coins. Markets change; thus, the standards must necessarily change. As such, how can you justify the grade of this piece as acceptable market grading and then pretend that the standards have never changed? The market of 1990 was very different from 1995 which was different from 2000-2008, which is very different from now.

 

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Is that a yes? It's strange someone would make such accusations and than hide from them when asked directly to clarify. Yes or no questions are very easy to answer, why are you refusing it?

 

Asked and answered. If you are too stupid to read and interpret what is already clear cut then that is your problem. I explicitly addressed this from the beginning. Perhaps you should spend more time studying for the verbal reasoning section of your SAT exam instead of trolling coin forums.

Regardless of whether constructive or classic fraud, fraudulent is fraudulent.

 

Why no answer again? I mean shouldn't someone believe and stand behind what they say?

Is PCGS and NGC committing fraud and defrauding their customers. Say yes or no it's a very simple answer

 

The prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until around age 25. You probably haven't even reached puberty. I'll happily have a more thorough discussion when your brain has fully formed and you are able to understand basic prose otherwise we are wasting my time.

 

Always sad when people try to make people think something and won't say it directly.

So to clarify do you or do you not stand behind the accusations that PCGS and NGC are committing fraud on people, yes or no?

 

That's my point, it happened so early, and the changes were so drastic that it couldn't be considered watering down. It was an adjustment made by a fledgling business that realized that it's initial policies were flawed.

I didn't stop collecting, in 2011 I decided to sell my entire collection save my Jefferson Nickel Registry set. Since my Registry collection was nearing completion even back then, I have added very few coins to my collection in the last 8 years. That said, I thoroughly enjoy flipping coins and buying raw coins and having them graded. I'm a small time submitter who submits a few dozen coins per year, mostly Jefferson Nickels. But if the standards for Jefferson's had changed, I would notice. They have not changed. Most of the other coins I submit are Morgan Dollars, Peace Dollars, and 20th century Silver. I have likewise seen no changes in the grading of these coins either.

 

Again, you are ascribing to a grading philosophy that views flaws as grade limiting. My grading philosophy mirrors the TPG method which grades holistically and doesn't punish a coin simply because one element of grading may be subpar for the assigned grade.

 

Strike strike from that list. Strike is irrelevant to the technical grade. Add contact marks to the list.

 

It's every bit a gem, @Paddy54. I think 64 is a little hard on that one.

 

At what point, under your philosophy, does one category or component of grading completely swallow all of the others to effectively render the others nugatory? So does a little color and nice luster make an otherwise MS65 coin based on strike, surfaces, etc., a 67? If so, you are cheapening the real 67s (i.e. those that are all there at the 67 level for strike, surfaces, luster, eye appeal, etc.).

P.S. Implicit in your argument is that TPG "graders" are really expert appraisers. It is hard enough to technically describe coins to meaningfully convey useful information about a coin's condition. It is impossible to be an expert appraiser across all of the different categories of coins you are likely to encounter. Your grading scale is based on fleeting criteria and even more subjective than technical grading.

 

What is so hard about assigning a number grade to each element of grading, and then accepting the resultant grade. Just because the TPGs happen to employ the same philosophy that I do with respect to grading is no reason to get salty about it. And there is nothing wrong with your grading philosophy, but it will mean that you will disagree with TPG grades more often than me.

Furthermore, your little appraiser thing is silly. The number of coins that are actually value graded is so small that it’s not even worth mentioning. Taking luster and eye appeal into account isn’t value grading, it is simply a part of the market grading process. Remember that 1958-D Franklin that sold for $100K, that coin was value graded. In that case, they ignored the surfaces and awarded a top pop grade based solely on the eye appeal. And guess what, I agreed with the TPG grade on that coin as well.

 

And so did the market but a lot of people felt the need to belittle the bidders

 

Because it leads to ambiguity and quirky results. It is like color bumping. The services add a premium built into the new "market" grade and then people are buried into paying an additional premium on top of the premium it already enjoys at the new lofty market grade. Soon the grades lose meaning.

I'm not bitter about it. I just don't see it as a stable market construct if the TPGs are going to meaningfully guarantee their work. The coin market seems like a huge Jenga tower ready to collapse.

We'll have to agree to disagree. In fairness though I did collect toned coins (true monsters) so perhaps my observations are skewed a bit.

Market grading is value grading.

 

Where did someone belittle the bidders?

 

This formula might work for grades above MS-65, but the high weight on the entirely-subjective category of eye appeal makes this formula less objective than it appears. What if someone does not like the obverse toning and rates the eye appeal as MS-64? Who are you to say they are objectively wrong?

Strike is important, but as long as you are not in the MS-68/69/70 region or looking at something as crappy as a 1922 no-D, it really does not matter grade-wise, especially if you have special designations for the strike that automatically affect the value like market grading does (FBL, FH, FSB, FT, etc.). Those that do not have special designations (buffalo nickels, for example) will trade at insane premiums above the assigned grade because specialists recognize the superior strike. Should the TPGs market-grade these to reflect the value of the coin? This just opens a whole can of worms.

Surface preservation and luster are by far the most important criteria for grading coins, and their weights should reflect that.

The formula I’d propose for BU coins would be:

Surface Preservation: 50%
Luster: 30%
Strike: 10%
Eye Appeal: 10%

And for clearly-cirulated circulated (AU-55 and below) coins:

Surface preservation: 90%
Eye Appeal: 10%

Using these formulas, the half here would be:

SP: 0.5 x 65 = 32.5
L: 0.3 x 66 = 19.8
S: 0.1 x 66 = 6.6
EA: 0.1 x 67 = 6.7

Total: 65.6. In reality, I’d probably assign a higher weight to SP, sacrificing S and EA.

Using your numbers, this formula spits out an even 66.

When PCGS takes away from technical aspects of a grade and assigns them to highly-subjective aspects of the grade, we get very debatable (and arguably inflated) grades.

 

Nope. Technical grading is subjective as well

 

While I don't think formulas really work, I'm at:
Surface Preservation: 40%
Luster: 30%
Strike: 10%
Eye Appeal: 20%

SP: 0.4 x 65 = 26.0
L: 0.3 x 66 = 19.8
S: 0.1 x 66 = 6.6
EA: 0.2 x 66 = 13.2
---------------------------
65.6 - a solid 65 CAC worthy coin, maybe a +

 

All grading is somewhat subjective. The difference is the degree.