Does PCGS owe me?

The attorney analogy wasn't really far off to the mechanic one. In both instances you are paying someone for your time and yes a lot of trade industries do charge for them to look something over if you haven't committed to a service from them.

In the case of the coin a voucher for a future submission would build good will but legally no they aren't required to do anything. Everyone would be blasting them left and right if they slabbed one and were later found out to be wrong so I won't blame them if they aren't 100 percent sure. If they didn't charge at all in these instances people would just make stuff left and right to send in since all you had to lose was the cost of shipping.

As frustrating as it is there are business reasons businesses have to make those decisions.

I'm curious how many opinions would change if the coin was sent to NGC and they said the same or ANACS did as well.

 

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There are a couple key differences though. In the attorney analogy you're paying for the attorney's incremental services throughout the trial, not for the outcome itself. The outcome isn't even provided by the attorney, but by the judge and jurors. Also, in that example you are billed by the hour for attorney services regardless of the outcome, because you are purchasing their time. If the attorney spends 10 hours working on your case, you are going to pay for 10 hours of time, whether or not you get the outcome you would like at the end of the trial. This is not a good analogy for grading.

In the mechanic analogy, while you may end up paying for labor in some fashion as part of an overall bill, you're really just paying for the outcome - for your car to be fixed. If the mechanic spent 10 hours on your car and couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, you had better believe you're not going to owe anything. It's irrelevant that they spent 10 hours looking at your car if they're unable to come up with a result; effectively they have done nothing for you and so you shouldn't pay. That's exactly the scenario we're discussing in this thread.

When you pay for grading, you're not paying for time, you're paying for the end result of the service, which is that authentication, grading (if applicable), and slabbing (if applicable) have been performed for the coin. In this case we have a genuine coin with a questionable counterstamp, but where do you draw the line? What if you submitted 100 authentic but obscure coins and they declined to slab or give an opinion on any of them, simply because they didn't have the in-house expertise to properly authenticate the coins?

Why is there any scenario where it's okay for a TPG to not provide the authentication service you've paid for and not issue a refund? There shouldn't be one. If they don't think a piece is authentic, then they had better be prepared to say it's not genuine, or else give a refund. Not giving an opinion at all on authentication is a cop out. It basically just means they don't have the expertise on hand to make a determination, and that's hardly something you should have to pay for.

 

@Jaelus
If you can find mechanics like that more power to you, but anywhere around me or that I've ever been if a mechanic looks at your car for 10 hours you better believe you're getting a bill for labor. Labor is always a significant portion of the bills as well. You are in fact paying for their time to do what they do being fixed is just the end result unless of course you get a flat rate deal from them.

In the situation of the obscure coins you mentioned the most likely outcome is a no service with a refund. I have had a medal returned from PCGS with a refund for no service because it wasn't something they did.

Saying they didn't have the expertise on hand to make a definitive decision is over simplifying in this case. There are instances where they have used the same code which are pretty easy to say for sure but they are very rare. Counter stamps are a hard bunch. Whose the judge and jury on it for whose right? What is pcgs says no, ngc says yes or vice versa then what?

My advice for his piece would be to treat it as a discovery piece. If there are recognized experts in the counter stamp field ect get letters from the, autheticating. Include reseaech materials with the submission and the letters showing the authenticity ect and you may have a better chance of getting yes. As Doug mentioned though I would much rather they say we don't know then just pretend like they do

 

What everyone is missing in all of this is that PCGS DOES, IN FACT, offer a free-grading certificate for items that they don't authenticate. The 50-cent piece is something that they will normally authenticate. The problem is that the counterstamp covers an area of the coin with minimized definition, which has a feel of "plugged" in this case. That might be part of what played into their decision. PCGS *did* analyze the coin. They may have had different opinions from the graders, so they couldn't reach consensus as to authentication. That's where the assessment of "Authenticity Unverifiable" for the coin. By contrast, if they had reached a consensus, you may have received a "Questionable Authenticity" label instead.

Circling back to the mechanic analogy: Imagine you take your car in because "it doesn't start." The car makes the clicking sound but just won't turn over. They say it likely may be the starter or alternator or both are bad. After running tests, they determine both are bad, so they replace both. Car still doesn't start. They say it might be the engine, but that overhaul isn't something their shop does. You get a bill for repairing the starter and alternator. As far as you know, nothing is fixed.

That's how this entire situation feels to me. PCGS obviously did something. You just aren't happy with the outcome. I envision those signs you occasionally see at a garage that say:

 

This Azores countermarked series is plagued with forgeries. There are probably more forgeries than there are genuine examples. The problem with this particular countermark is that many of the forgeries are and have been accepted as being genuine for a long time. These countermarks were supposed to be applied to worn out silver coins to revalidate them so that they could circulate freely. Much like your Spanish mainland pistareen, though from the image it is difficult to say for sure if it is genuine or not either.

One thing about countermarked coinage to keep in mind is does the countermark/host combination make sense for the issue. Reading about the time of issue and any decrees or other information pertaining to the issue and how and why they were issued will help incredably.

Azores is an Island near Europe and does not have the natural resources to produce the specie needed for commerce and had to rely on the specie they got through trade from the mainland. Early US coinage was not really used for international trade and are in fact rare with foreign countermarks.

The Azores countermark was supposed to be applied in 1885, which means that the 1829 $1/2 would have circulated for more than 50 years, not to mention that it would have circulated after the application of the countermark. I would say that the countermark is highly suspicious, but on an apearently genuine host coin.

 

Actually i got an error coin back from NGC last year. “unsuitable for grading”

I figure sometimes you gotta eat crow.