Grading Companies

How honest do you thing that they are?

Obviously they cant tell you that your MS coins are only VF. But when you get up in the high sixties things change. I know when People send in rolls of ASE's to be graded. Do you think that they purposley grade most of them 69 to keep the population of 70's down.

 

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If I told ya' I'd have to kill ya.. lol

Well...

I have never been able to see a difference, just from the naked eye, a 69 from a 70
Now, on my MS69 buffalo, I can see one scratch, and that is the only imperfection, which makes it go down from a 70
Now, a lot of imperfections can be seen, through a loupe.
Graders, have to have a reason for making the coin a 69, it is not like they have a conveyor belt, and have some go to one pile, and the others go to the other pile, and grade them at random.
I think for modern coins, a 69 and 70 are very tiny distances away, and the imperfections have to be very slight, making them harder to grade.
I'd like to think that all the grading companies are honest

 

What would be the motivation for a top-tier TPG to purposely misgrade coins?

 

I would love to know that they are honest because i have many slabed coins and i dont think that they are corrupt and do what ever the feel. but this topic has come up many times. and i want to know what the smarter people think

 

**Number are only an example**

If 100,000 people all sent in a roll of silver eagles to get graded and 25% were 70 and the rest 69's that means 500,000 were MS70 which is a high percentage. So if they graded only 5% MS70 then there is only 100,000 to go arround. If they maby had some sort of motivation to do it, it would not be hard to do, as T$ stated it takes an expery eye to tell the difference between 69 and 70

 

Excuse me? :kewl:

 

I mean the people of coin talk not smarter than you and hobo

 

I don't think they intentionally mis-grade the coins. When a coin gets a 70, it just means the grader missed the flaw that would have made the coin a 69.

 

I think that they are as honest as they can be. Grading is more of an art than a science. But, when you get to that 69/70 threshold...the difference is so minor it becomes irrelevant. A 70 isn't a "perfect" coin as no such thing exists...all have flaws. But, a 70 might be a tiny bit less flawed when under magnification. IMHO, the price jump from a 69 to a 70 very rarely justifies the jump in condition.

Now, I know some companies have (or have had) policies in the past about 70s that are very questionable. For example, PCGS wouldn't give ASE's a 70 even if they deserved it based on their standards because of the possibility of milk spotting. Those coins could turn in the holder so to protect themselves they didn't give out the 70 grade. Occasionally one would get a 70, but it was very rare. This policy also helped build the reputation that they were a harsher grader than NGC. I don't know if they still do this.

 

What percentage do you think it should be? And how did you arrive at that figure?

Would your figure be for unsearched rolls or rolls of coins that submitters have cherrypicked?

 

The only motivation I could think of for a TPG to hold back on higher grades, is more business. If every ASE for example that they received left with an MS70 grade, the market for that coin in all grades would plummet and be worth bullion content alone, regardless of grade. That would give collectors less if any incentive to submit their ASE's because grade would be irrelevent. Do I think they do this. Yes, to some extent, because lets get real here, nearly all ASE's are what most TPG's would consider ms 69-ms70 right out of the chute, thats just modern minting. But, thats just a miniscule piece of the pie.
Guy~

 

The problem is that there are more and more grading services poping up every day. Many are fly by night attempts to make a new company, some are people working out of their basements, some may well be just someone that wants to make money and has no idea of coin grading at all. Of course there are the reputable, old time ones also. If you go to Google and type in Coin Grading services you may well be shocked at how many there are.
As to your question as to how honest they may be. I doubt anyone could really answer that. Even the well established grading services are made up of people. Many come and go as with any buisness and some people are honest and others are not. The most popular grading services have much to loose by erroneous results so are PROBABLY, POSSIBLY,MAYBE more montored.
If you don't trust the ones out there now, just start your own grading service.

 

.........ah yes. but the convincer is the CAC sticker.

 

Does anyone hear an echo?

I'm just giving you a had time GD.

 

hmmmmmmmmmmm

Grading coins - slabs - CAC - MS70 - MS69....hhmmm...Standards up standards Down - Bad hair day on the graders part......hhmmm...just imo a way to make money from collectors.... :hammer: .....to part a fool from his money.....heheheehe.....sorry if I offend.....anyone....don't mean too

 

It's not a matter of honesty it's a matter of marketability,

It's not a matter of honesty it's a matter of marketability - there is no MS-70 coin, period. Nothing made by man and machines is perfect no matter what they say. They (the TPGC) all are in business to make money by grading and often authenticating your coins and then putting it in a piece of plastic, that's what they do.
If you believe they grade all coins the same then you are wrong. They purposely keep MS-70's to a minimum to seduce large dealers to send in groups or rolls, heck even boxes of silver eagles. They have created the very market we are discussing here, that's why they would and continue to do so.
Look you'all if it walks like a duck, well you know the rest.
I'll bet you anything that if we could travel back in time to say 1951 and go to a large coin show and tell all these wonderful old-timers what these companies are doing they would either laugh us out of the bourse or have us locked up and throw away the key.
In fact I am going to throw this scenario up to Mr. Bowers to see if he can get an article out of it for Coin World, I think it may make a good one.
Now this is my opinion only but, if you believe that the encapsulated coin in more valuable or more important than a raw coin of the same grade then the TPG companies have also seduced you and succeeded in their very purpose of creating a market. I will concede any business that makes a product then creates a market is smart, very smart. But I do not have to buy it unless I am seduced also. There is nothing new under the sun folks except illusion.
One more thing and I'll shut up - one day soon all these modern commemorative and MS-69 or 70 modern proofs and buillion, (all the coins that are supposed to be almost perfect to begin with) will not even fetch the price of the same coin in it's original packaging. Plastic will litter the floor like broken crumbs waiting to be swept up.

 

I didn't know you were from Boston. :eating:

 

Fair enough.

Something like that.