I have been looking at a lot of PCI Slabs with the gold labels, and it seems that quite often they grade accurately or undergrade coins that have been circulated, however they seem to assign ms-66 grades to coins that are 64's etc. Has anyone else noticed this with their circulated coins, or I am simply looking at a non-representative sample?
Every once in a while you can find a properly graded coin slabbed by almost any of the lower tier grading companies. Less often you can find an undergraded coin in one of their slabs. But the vast majority of the time the coins are overgraded. I have never noticed any difference in accuracy between circ & unc examples.
I've thought the same thing, but attributed it to my lack of grading skill. When I look at PCI slabs, the circulated coins appear pretty accurately graded through XF, but the uncirculated coins appear overgraded. Somewhere around AU, Dr. Jekyll leaves the room and Mr. Hyde takes over.
Maybe it's just my opinion but circulated coins should be fairly accurate to grade by most TPGS if they use the standard stuff to look for ,readable liberty , lines in skirt , wear in feathers , etc,etc. It's when you get into the incirculated coins that the troubles seem to begin. Opinions / grades vary widely , some TPGS just overgrade to make a buck , others I believe just seem to have 10 graders at work , all with different skills , thus the wide differences in the results. I believe PCI is one of those others , sometimes overgrading , sometimes undergrading. I don't think they do anything purposely to just make the almighty dollar but maybe I'm wrong. Their grade on circulated coins from what I've seen is about as good as any of the other BIG 4 TPGS. That's one mans opinion. What about some others.
All things being equal (which is never the case in grading coins), I mentally deduct 2 to 3 MS points if I am looking at a coin via the auction sites for PCI graded MS coins. I consider them a level below the top four and in line with SEGS. I have not purchased a circulated coins ever in a PCI slab, but it does make good sense that at the very minimum, ALL of the TPG's should follow standard grading areas like wheat lines (Lincolns) and the word "Liberty" for Barbers, etc.
I have only purchased two PCI gold label slabs, both Indian cents, both way undergraded. One they graded as G-4 is actually closer to VF, another was labeled as VF-30, actually is closer to AU-50. So yes, I believe they do consistently undergrade some specific series, if you look hard enough plenty of deals are to be found in PCI slabs. For Mint State grades, two - three points overgraded seems to be the consensus.
One thing to considerwhen looking at third tier slabs is that there is a selective "weeding" that is done with them. Since the circulated coins ususally don't have large price jumps, accurately graded circ coins will tend to stay in the third tier slabs. But with the mint state coins it is another matter and properly graded third tier slabs end to get cracked and crossed to the upper tier services. So what you see in the market tends to be the leavings. So naturally they tend to be higher in misgraded coins. You would think that, but when Coin World did their grading test of the services a few years ago there were two circulated coins in the test group and the results for those two were all over the map. No two services gave them the same grade. My thought when I saw the results was "If the grading services can't grade the circulated coins welll where there is much more leeway, what makes people think they can grade MS coins to one point accuracy."
