In general, I like PCGS TrueViews. In fact, I get excited when I realize a coin I own or about to bid on has one. However, I have come across some very bad images on PCGS Cert Verify over the years. "Bad" in different ways. Some of them are over-the-top glamour shots the make the coin look amazing when in fact it's a turd. Some are low resolution, or out of focus, or the color temp is way off. I have seen thousand of high quality and accurate PCGS TrueViews as well, including on some of my own coins. I realize that some photos on PCGS are from prior to the modern TrueView imaging service, I even own some coins like that. For our purposes here, I will consider any official PCGS photos they show here when you look up the certification number: https://www.pcgs.com/cert By far the worst I have ever seen was I coin I looked up today shown below. Your eyes are not deceiving you, it's not a bad screen shot, this is the official photo for this coin. Click the link and see for yourself. https://www.pcgs.com/cert/81467135 What a travesty for such a pretty coin! Luckily, other images exist, else we would all think this was a one-sided sand blasted grainy Barber dime. Please join me and Post your WORST PCGS TrueViews of a coin you own or have found. If you have better or more accurate photos of the coin, share those as well please. p.s. I have a few more I will share as well.
Another coins I thought looked bad in a TrueView I came across yesturday, but looks pretty in the GC photos, and from my experience with CG, will also look nice in-hand, is this Roosevelt Dime: https://www.greatcollections.com/Coin/1503872/1959-D-Roosevelt-Dime-PCGS-MS-67-FB-Toned-from-photo PCGS Photos: For some, the differences are subtle perhaps. The coin to my eye looks much more pleasing in the slab shot. But I certainly think its fair to say the the TrueViews are NOT the glamour shots here! They make the coin look worse than a simple slab shot, the exact opposite of what most people would imagine when hearing TrueView.
Here is a coin I own. The color in the original PCGS photos were so bad, I had them retake the photo in Slab recently. The original photos were prior to Modern incarnation of TrueView, but I assume you these are real PCGS photo and live on their cert site until very recently. New as of 2023: https://www.pcgs.com/cert/20784158 Reality: Compare how bad that original PCGS color temperature was!
The first photo isn’t a TrueView. They might come up where TV’s normally do, but shots like these are actually scans from the days when PCGS used the “sniffer” to root out doctored coins. They abandoned the program a few years ago.
I've had some TrueViews that were rather dark for my taste. (This TrueView was shot through the plastic-it's not awful, but not optimal, either. To be fair, this one probably is a bit truer to the coin in hand.)
Now that the original TrueView guru, Phil Arnold, has gone from working at PCGS to GC, it will interesting to see the Great Collections offerings to come. I always thought their slab shots were pretty good to begin with. I suppose Phil is behind that new GC feature called GreatPhoto.
I updated the title of the thread to reflect the fact that I was talking about ANY PCGS "official" photos found on their site for a given coin, be it CoinFacts, TrueViews, or any other imaging done by PCGS themselves and customer facing on there website. (Which is really what I intended all along.) Sorry for any confusion. I still want to see all those crazy terrible images. So Please share away.
