PCGS made a big mistake?

And those silly Territorial gold
collectors, what are they thinking?
That gold came from some debauched
mining district; dug up by some guy
sleeping in the dirt next to a camp trollop.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I think you're more likely right than wrong, and I see Matt Dinger has "liked" your post (surprise!). But what if we're wrong? We just might be witnessing a sea change in numismatics that has no reverse gear. Some people even with more experience than my 51 years in coin collecting are starting to sense a real and perhaps permanent change happening. Maybe Nottelmann has his finger on the pulse and you don't, Matt. Again, I peg it at less than 50/50, but not zero.

We have to admit this - this new and coming generation is far less malleable to their elders' opinions and views than any in the history of civilization. They are all mutants. They're full goose bozo, off the hook, out to lunch. And it is THEY who are going to be defining the future of numismatics, not the pasty white beer bellied bolo tie wearing crowd. These kids think the Battle of Gettysburg is a football game in a few weeks in the York/Adams Athletic League. They know precisely what a Stack Overflow Error is and what do to about it, but they never heard of the Monroe Doctrine.

These kids are a different SPECIES, man!

 

Now THAT is a brilliant point! But what I think you are missing is how ubiquitous Barnumism is in ALL facets of 21st century life. And no one cares! I live in politics, and BOTH sides (keep in mind I work for one of them) are so up to their nostrils in counting on the public's Barnumism that it is literally nauseating. 90% of committed skeptics are wusses because even THEY are unaware how corrupt politicians are. Nothing qualifies as "real" any more, not even goldbugism. It's all make-believe.

 

And it's mirrored pefectly in the
zombie culture rising.

 

Doug, admit it - he wrote if for you at your personal request...

 

The value of anything in an auction market, which at its core all actual numismatic transactions are, is determined by the combined opinion of all market participants, assuming widely shared information. That is so for the value of a PCGS label with JFK's picture and the letters ANA on it, and ABSOLUTELY EVERY BIT AS MUCH for the intentionally mangled crystalline mass made up primarily (999/1000 of them) of atoms with 79 protons in their nuclei. At an existential and metaphysical level, neither's value can be said to be more or less real than the other's. Both are matters of group opinion at any given point in time.

Were we to insist that the value of the gold is any more fundamentally "real" than the value of the label, we are engaging in hubris. I can buy back the gold coins I sold at ANA 2011, or pieces just like them, today and have many hundreds of remaining dollars in my pocket next to the original gold coins. Why? Group opinion, nothing more or less.

When we insist that only classic American coins are truly worth having, all we are doing is being unfairly restrictive as to from whom we are soliciting opinion votes, aren't we? ("I don't see how Nixon won, all my friends voted for McGovern.") Worse yet, that demographic we like to hear from is dying off daily at horrendous rates, and the ones whose opinions we prefer to discount are being freshly created on a daily basis. What's wrong with this picture, folks?

Demographically, classic coin collecting has only one long range hope - indoctrinate the new guys to our way of thinking. All I'm saying is that it's not going to be that easy, guys. They are a resistant bunch of monkeys, these kids.

 

Sounds like your playing. What
gives us the right to "indoctrinate"
people on to what to collect?

 

Ah yes, the line of demarcation between education and indoctrination is a wispy, tenuous and ethereal one, is it not? The NEA seems to have crossed it unrepentantly, haven't they?

 

Public Schools convince them they
are special snowflakes rather than monkies. Why not just call them what they are-decaying matter just like the rest of us.

This might be a slippery slope to politics?

 

Humans are to monkeys as hairless cats are to tabbies, baby.

And...

"You are totally and completely unique, just like everyone else."

 

It turns out to plain and simple they made a big mistake. They should have required proof of purchase but they did not and now they are going to pay for it with a lose of business and a loss in modern coin value with pcgs special labels !! ANybody think NGC may move into the number one coin grader spot ?/

 

No, no, no. You are totally and
completly unique just like your
JFK gold label.

 

Again this is all opinion. In mine, they already had. For me, the analysis is simple. Does ANYONE think more highly of PCGS due to the Chicago policy they adopted? Now, who thinks less highly of them? PCGS loses. QED.

 

On "special" and "snow", the jury is still out. "Flakes" is pretty much confirmed.

 

Has it been peer reviewed?

 

I hope you're right. It'll bottom out the prices on the stuff I like to collect as demand withers, while the modern stuff which I don't like, will be in demand and at a premium. Let them change the face of numismatics....for my overall benefit.

 

Funny you would say that. I have been watching price trends very closely on the stuff I both like and have a shot at affording, and it pretty much is mostly eroding in price on the average. Anything Mark Cuban might be picking up is likely not ever going to make my cabinet, unless I go all mutation and break into his place.