Hi Condor, There is always alot of talk here about the top T.P.G, your a slab collector and researcher, I would like to have your opinion on who you think the top five T.P.G. are in the grading industry today and why ?
I'm particularly interested in who gets the number five spot since most people seem to agree on one through four, but not the order. Not having nearly the grading skill that many folks here possess, I tend to think of NGC, PCGS, ICG, and ANACS [in that order] as close enough to equal in grading toughness to buy any of their slabs. ICG seems a little generous with modern coins, particularly silver eagles, but not so bad as to exclude their purchase. Treat this a my guess and/or opinion to just get the ball rolling, not a scientific study.
Not attempting to enter a ruckus myself but many of if not most " sample slabs " do not seem to have a grade on them. People may collect slabs just for the changes in the actual slab, labeling etc. Someone surely would be castigated if they did not put PCGS/NGC on top and either one of those chosen will likely bring heat from anyone who has their most valuable coin(s) in the opposite makers slab. I think PCGS under grades to bring stellar value to their higher grades or at least to encourage folks to resubmit for a higher grade. Again if one were to view this PCGS Grading Summit Video http://www.pcgs.com/articles/article_view.chtml?artid=4641&universeid=313 it would seem I am not the only one who feels this way.
Bruce, I hate to tell you this but I am probably the WORST person to ask that question of. I hate ALL of the grading services and not a single coin in my collection is slabbed. I will not buy a slabbed coin and break it out so that it is raw. I am so anti-slab that I will not even look at slabbed coins when I am seeking coins for my collection. If I am at a show and looking for coins for my collection and I look in a dealer case and just see slabs, I just move on to the next table. My slab collection is rather extensive, but I have never paid much attention to the coins that are in those slabs. They are of no importance to me. For the slab reference set the only thing that matters is the slab itself not what it contains. In some cases some of the slabs I need would be much more easily and cheaply acquired by simply submitting coins to have them put in the slabs. But I do not want to have anything to do with directly contributing to them so I won't do submissions either. I do have a few personal opinions about some of the grading services, but I won't normally discuss them because they are not complimentry I am at least somewhat dependant on the services for the information I receive on their products and If I start venting some of those opinions some of my information sources may dry up. Now if you want to know about certification services that would be another matter. (certification and grading are NOT the same thing.) I do approve of them. Unfortunately for the most part they are all gone now. No one really cares today about certification (Guaranteed identification and authentication), all they care about is the grade, how much they can sell it for, and whether or not they might be able to get it to grade even higher if they paid the service again. (In my opinion todays services do not do certification. They often don't do proper identification and they DON'T authenticate other than a quick glance "It looks good to me." . They don't do any testing unless there is something blatently odd going on.) The best of the certification services was probably ANAAB which was the direct decendant of the original ANACS. Both of those services identified the coin, weighed them, measured them, did specific gravity tests, photograghed them, for rarer pieces did comparisons against the photo files of the known genuine dies and/or the known fakes. (The ANA has hundreds of thousands of photos of coins to show the features of the different known dies, and of the known fakes. When the ANA sold ANACS to Amos Press, they kept the photofiles and then later used them with ANAAB.) The had a large number of outside consultants who were experts in their series that they could and did send the pieces to for verification. When the coins came back they were CERTIFIED. If there was ANY question they were bagged. Of course ANACS certification began dying when grading began and was finished off with beginning of slabbing and the sale of the company. ANAAB was born about a year later but the ANA never bothered to advertise the company, or promote it in any substantial way. Nor did they provide adiquate funding or staff. Even so it managed to limp alongfor ten years. I rank it highly because they moved the certification into many more areas than ANACS had and handled much more non-mainstream material. About the only company still doing certification is ACCS Ancient Coin Certification Service, and as the name says they only do ancients. But you do get the whole workup and by one of the top people in the field.
I think you are wrong, Condor. Judging from the excellent and informative response, I would say you are one of the best people to ask about this. Everyone received more than they bargained for. Thanks. :thumb:
I feel exactly as Condor feels about slabbing. It adds 20 to 30 bucks to the price of a coin for no apparent reason. The slabbed coins I do have are of less interest to me than the multiple coin books I fill on a regulare basis. I'm not going to find fault with those that do use grading services because that is how they choose to collect coins and I don't believe that there is any way to incorrectly collect coins. Slabbing just isn't my way of collecting coins.
Hi Condor, First of all I would like to thank you for your response to my question about slabs and the grading industry. It was very informative and well written, and I do value your opinion on this subject, that is why I asked you the question, thanks again for your informative reply.:thumb:
Nice post Bruce and thank you Condor for the info on slabbing versus certification. For the new collector it is often hard to sort out how the world of coin collecting has reached the state that it is in today. By this I mean there seems to be some much emphasis on getting a coin graded/slabbed to be able to say "it's worth this" instead of doing the work of learning what makes a coin the grade that it is and not a grade higher. I personally don't care for slabbed coins either, eventhough I have several. I use the ones I have as references in order to grade my collection, but I doubt I will ever spend the money to have my coins graded by a TPG. I'll just keep learning to do this for myself and become the true Numismatist and be able the say "yep that's a MS65 and it will never be a MS66 because _____.
I personally don't care for slabbed coins either, eventhough I have several. I use the ones I have as references in order to grade my collection, but I doubt I will ever spend the money to have my coins graded by a TPG. I'll just keep learning to do this for myself and become the true Numismatist and be able the say "yep that's a MS65 and it will never be a MS66 because _____.[/QUOTE] I think the only time I would use a T.P.G. would be if I bought 1909-s vdb or a 1916-d mercury dime or a coin of that stature then I would have some kind of guarantee of the coins authenticity.
I agree with that. If I obtained a coin that had big money value I would want it authenticated, graded, and preserved. Then in the safe it would go. Unfortunately for me I think the most valuable coin I own is my 1903-S Morgan or my 1954 Proof Franklin and to me they are maybe worth 100.00+ apiece but still not worthy of spending more money on them. I have this thing about not being able to put my "gloved" hand on the coin. But I guess if I had a MS 1916D Merc. I would have to make sure it was safe/protected even from me "Mr. Butterfinger".
I have been reading these posts - plus a lot of others. This continues to confuse me - by your alls standards I am a rookie - so for key dates should I stick to slabbed to play it safe? When I say slabbed I mean I think the grade on the slab matches the coin in the holder. Or since I like raw coins better should I gamble(??) and buy raw? I think I can come real close on IHC - I am looking at some key dates 1870-1873,1877 and 1886 type II. My IHC are about 1/2 graded and 1/2 ungraded - and from searching it seems all the good ones are graded and I always seem to find something that makes the raw coins risky to buy. For example http://www.harlanjberk.com/unitedst...title=Indian+%A2&inventorygroup=us&linenum=17 this coin is nice (not talking about the price), but the rim ding and some of the spotting keeps me from buying it. This is almost impossible to ask for advice because each has there own preference. I also notice several have posted if they are spending over $100 dollars they want it slabbed. OHHH - what to do!!! I have already decided that most of the coins I have that are raw will stay raw. I have 3/4 I am curious to see how they come out. Also I already know the 1877 will be graded. I enjoy reading all the responses to posts like this one - good job Bruce, you help us all with the right question. Now back to my other forum where I am considered one of the experts.
Same as Condor. Except I have NO slabbed coins. I Have bought some in the past but all have long been broaken out. I would like to say though that I do like PCGS the best because they are the easiest to break open.
Mark as a rookie, I would recommend that if you are going to buy coins that are KNOWN to be commonly counterfeited then I could understand why you would want to buy a slabbed one. But if you do buy one slabbed by one of the top services, Why? Because although NONE of them actually have a written guarantee of authenticity the top three services have ALWAYS stood behind their product and bought back any coin that made it into one of their slabs that was later found to be a counterfeit. (Many people can't understand the difference between volintarily standing behind their product and a written guarantee that MANDATES that they do so. If they have a guarantee and fail to buy them back they are in breach of contract. Without the guarantee they can chose to buy them back or not anytime they choose. And can apply it to so and not others.) As you learn more you should become less and less dependant on the services opinions as you are able to rely more on your own. There are also some key coins that are not commonly faked which you could probably safely buy unslabbed and some non-keys that should almost always be bought slabbed unless you are skilled enough to judge them yourself. There are so many fake type II gold dollars out there that it is best to get them slabbed, and the same for three dollar gold pieces. The 09-SVDB and 16-D dime should always be bought slabbed because there are SO MANY fakes out there (At one time there were more fake coins out there of these two issues that the mint ever struck.) But since each of these come from just four die pairs it is possible to become familiar with the die features of the genuine coins and then once again slabbing is not really needed. Except for the fact that since the vast majority of the people CAN"T tell a real one from a fake no one is willing to buy one for any kind of decent money unless it is slabbed.
The work related Baan forum you see in my signature below my name. I am a moderator in a couple of the forums there. And for some reason people think I am an expert and all I really do in a lot a cases is draw out information so someone else gives a solution. To condor - yes I plan on buying the 1877 slabbed - currently I am keeping my eye on one, but it will have to wait until next year. For the 1870 - 1873 they will probably be slabbed because I have been looking for months(about 3) for ones in the grade that I want at a price that is reasonable. I seem to be able to find them in the higher grades, but I would prefer XF, settle for a very fine. Most of the raw coins I have seen just have not appealled to me - I keep finding something wrong. So I am being patient.
