How much is a 67+ worth over a 67? Blind Grader?

No it's not. The flourishing internet market which has opened collectors up to an infinitely wider supply than their local shop/show doesn't really exist today without them. Many more people also get burned by fakes, doctored coins ect, now if someone chooses to go the raw only route that is their decision and on them if they get burned.

Redbook is the most over rated thing ever in my opinion. It's very easy to search around and learn or look at auction pictures and get the same information and a bunch more.

Someone being over excited isn't necessarily a bad thing either. Many of those people do turn into collectors which may not have without the TPGs.

I could also go to the same extreme on the other side and say that anyone who truly cares about coins should be submitting them as the slabs are their best protection

 

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Short story...…. I worked at a foundry and we experimented with vacuum lost wax casting. Sure, perhaps only one in three hundred are "perfect" but that is all it takes when you are dealing with high dollar items. The bad items can be re-melted. After experimenting with high vacuum casting, I am willing to bet most people can be fooled if they are using a standard loop. Of course, graders are specialist, why else shell out money for an opinion? Also, once slabbed, I guess it is beyond question unless re-evaluated for some reason. Interesting foundry fact, tungsten and gold have the same specific gravity.

 

To all the guys in this thread who are taking shots at the TPGs and saying that you don’t need them because you can grade coins yourself: your assigned grade means very little when it comes time to sell. So if you are talking about inexpensive coins (under $100) then okay, but if you try to sell coins worth hundreds or thousands without having them graded, you are going to get absolutely fleeced.

There is nothing wrong with knowing how to grade. That knowledge will steer you away from overgraded coins, give you the confidence to pay premiums for undergraded or accurately grades coins, as well as recognize when you should resubmit a coin. But in the end, when you put a coin up for sale, it will be the TPG grade that drives the price.

 

Again, I ask, what ever did we do before god bestowed the all knowing TPGs upon us? How did any coin ever get bought and sold?

it’s only the way it is now because the TPGs have marketed it that way and people are now conditioned to not think for themselves and learn. Much easier to read a label I guess.

To each their own.

 

Truthfully, collectors were at an extreme disadvantage because the people setting both buy grades and sale grades were the coin dealers.

What do you think? That you walked into a coin shop and told the owner that he was going to buy your gem grade Morgans and pay gem prices? No way, he slapped you around, told you that your coins weren’t gem grade, told you he was the expert, and if you don’t want to leave empty handed, you will leave with MS63 money. And ya know what, you took it. A week later, the dealer had a fresh new inventory of gem grade Morgan Dollars listed at full MS65 retail prices in his display case.

The TPGs provide an insurance policy for collectors, and usually the person who pays for that policy is a dealer. So rather than being able to exploit collectors by buying at MS63 and selling at MS65, now they pay you wholesale value and sell it at retail value which is typically a small and reasonable markup percentage.

Instead of railing against the TPGs, you should be sending them thank you letters.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but knowledgeable buyers will "buy the coin, not the slab". Whenever you go to sell your coin it will be re-evaluated by the person who is going to buy it.

 

The worth of any coin is truly only what someone is willing to pay for it. If you do some historical research on auction prices realized and you will see incredible highs and depressing lows paid for the exact same coins that were projected to have brought in a lot more or a lot less money. Many examples of MS 66 Plus graded coins selling for less that MS 66 at a different auction. During this pandemic collectors are snapping up gold coins driving the prices up across the board and a plus grade bump may in fact double the price! Connoisseurs always want the best and will pay a premium for that plus grade if its a top pop. Purists do not care at all as they look only at the quality of strike, rarity and value of that coin to them personally.

 

So if you ignore everything you're a purist that knows better? And "purists" are the best graders on the planet?

 

But do tell us more about casting tungsten.

 

It's clear that the OP thinks he is the best grader that there has ever been. All graders are wrong and he is always right. He made that clear in post #1.

 

It is an interesting juxtaposition to me. I was a rabid coin lover for many years before there were TPG’s. I took a 25 year hiatus to raise a family and returned to an entirely new hobby.... Granted the coins I engage myself in now are different than those I purchased as a young man, but there is an entirely different dynamic now in the hobby..... The OP’s post is laced with stress over his choice. A hobby by its very definition should be devoid of stress. We often find ourselves engaged in heated exchanges over the finer technical points of MS61 vs. MS63. Not me. The most money I ever paid for a coin was made with the label hidden from my view (damaged, tooling). And I am OK with that. The label does not change what my hearts desire is..... The TPG’s are an invaluable resource, but turning them into a point of contention is an abomination to our hobby.

 

Can't happen. Ed Woods already claimed that pedestal position.

Don't send +(plus) and *(star) designated coins in for crossover.

 

A lesson learned: Expressing any opinion on any blog is troll baiting and just asking for a long list of insults.

I appreciate the real comments and opinions about grading. It is easy to recognize the trolls.

I am not a die-hard anti-grading service person. The slabbers provide a valuable public service. I especially appreciate the pictures of graded coins. That of course, is the acid test of authenticity of both the coin and the slab.

 

Well said Franky!

 

That's a bunch of bull and you know it. You came here telling everyone how great you are and how bad the services are and others called you out on it. Now you start calling members you don't even know, trolls. Who is being the "blind judge"? You should go back and read what you posted with a fresh mind.

 

What were the coins that you crossed? I ask because for some series of coins, PCGS is significantly more conservative in grading than NGC and its entirely possible that an NGC MS67+ and PCGS MS67 could have the same value. In addition, why not post photographs so we can decide for ourselves about the grading?

 

Some people are just not cut out for message boards where opposing opinions regarding their bold statements can be easily expressed.

 

If TPGs can grade far more coins and make more money having AI perform their grading, or at least parts of their grading, I don't see why this wouldn't happen someday. Whether it should is another question altogether.

Grading arguments would then turn from questions about human subjectivity to "who programmed the learning algorithm to favor such and such?"

Software gets used in other hobbies, such as model rocketry, to help calculate aerodynamics, trajectories and other complicated equations. It would all come down to creating software that produced what collectors consider "fair grades," or at least as fair as what TPGs produce now. If it can do it in a fraction of the time and the market accepts it, there is no reason for TPGs not to embrace it.

Of course, there are many other factors involved, such as who would write the software, who would pay the startup costs, would different software products produce different results, etc. AI isn't perfect, either, despite many of the press releases.