I prefer my coins raw. I only own 3 or 4 "slabs". But, I have a few coins which I might want to send to a TPG some day. I see adds in coinworld and numismatic news for ICG. They seem to be a much cheaper and easier option than the "big two", NGC and PCGS. I would just like to get some other opinions. So, what do you folks think? Thanks.
ICG tried to trick me into submitting an obviously cleaned coin (I would have lost the fee and it would have come back in a bodybag) I went with ANACS and got the net grade. I consider them to be fundamentally dishonest.
It depends on why you are slabbing. If it is financial, go with PCGS or NGC. If you want an accurate grade, use NGC. If you only need to know if they are authentic, ANACS, ICG, PCGS or NGC will work. My experience with ICG is that they grade more erratic than the rest
I'm pretty sure that you don't loose the entire grading fee if IGC doesn't grade your coin, but only $5 which they call an administration fee. In general I have liked the results I've received from ICG. However, how will they be after the big upheaval that took place at the end of December?
See here is the rub. ANACS fired alot of thier graders. So they went over to IGC. And some of IGC graders were offered jobs at ANACS. So is it the company itself that you are asking about or how a coin may be graded? And since e-bay included IGC into thier ''club'', IGC's testosterone went ballistic.
Never submitted any coins to ICG. Wanted to try out the "new" ANACS so I sent in an economy submission. They received it on Jan 23 with an expect ship date on Feb 21 which is 21 business days. They now have on their website it can be up to 35 business day before they ship. That isn't even right. Today is 37 business days and still nothing. Would love to tell you how they grade but not sure if I will get my coins back before 2008. Not impressed with them at all.
Dude... sorry to hear about that. I have had consistently good turnaround times with NGC, consistently slower with PCGS and ANACS.
this is standard there at the moment. They are trying to work out their move, but it seems to be a little rocky. As far as which is better, ANACS seems to have won the grader-swap by getting the best graders from each company, but ICG seems to be in less turmoil. Part of the ANACS problem is that Yaffe filed lawsuits against his former graders who went to ANACS in violation of their no-compete clauses. This has slowed the process at ANACS, though my understanding is that those lawsuits have closed. If James Taylor is free of Keith Love I believe that ANACS will eventually be the better service, but if they end up pandering to the HSN/Shop at Home networks like ICG used to then it's a toss up. This really seems like a wait and see issue to me.
Thanks for the update guys. Guess a few more days of waiting won't hurt. I will let you know what I think of the "new"" ANACS when I get my coins back. Have a good weekend.
The importance of this thread to me is that it points out that companies don't grade coins. People grade coins. So while PCGS and NGC might be the top two now, there is no guarantee that they will be top tier grading companies ten years from now. What's on the slab isn't as important as what's in the slab even though the coin market currently values the plastic as much as the metal at times.
Quite correct, but the point you are not taking into account is that companies determine which grading standards will be used - not the individual graders doing the actual grading. In other words, the graders have to do what the company tells them to do.
