LOL ! No Kurt, but that's certainly a good way of putting it. Merely that somewhere down the road we'll all know how they decided to handle it.
For now, I'm stocking up on popcorn for the coming slap fight between NGC and PCGS. My money's (as always) on Salzberg. Dude is "no nonsense".
I caught the same vibe from him at the Forum. It's a shame some of his positions are so objectionable.
This might be the most likely scenario. A new 100 point (with decimal) grading system will give new standards to grade to, will be recognizable as to the "new" system, and will allow the same TPGs that have bastardized the current system to their own benefit (and the system's ruin) to keep playing the game all the while ignoring their past transgressions.
I think there would be too much pushback from the numismatic community at large. At least, if the TPG's tighten up, there is still the same old system with which more knowledgeable collectors can "correct" for an erroneous number on the slab. The truly successful TPG - from a numismatic standpoint - will be not-for-profit and unanswerable to shareholders. If you weren't bound by the need for dividends and to always show an increase in revenue and profit, you could plow the net back into paying top dollar for the best talent in the business, and giving them enough time to properly evaluate each coin. And it should be under the auspices and carrying the imprimatur of the ANA, like it was when it started.
How can an organization like ANA handle the volume? It can't. Originally, there were no "moderns". It was universally decided it couldn't be worth the trouble or cost. Now the majority of NGC and PCGS coins are moderns. Still no CAC's. But now we get a new sticker company or two who do nothing but moderns. Oy vey! Remember why slabbing started. "Gradeflation" was something dealers did between buying a coin and selling it. The base problem: ethics, or the lack thereof. NFL games are not run without referees because everyone argues based on an desired outcome rather than truth. There has to be a referee as long as minor grade differences mean big money, which they probably shouldn't in the first place.
It's almost certain that ANA completely lacks the skillset to even attempt anything like this. What they_do have, however, is the only strictly-defined grading system which approaches "universal" approval, and the cachet to successfully endorse an operation created according to the financials I specified above. The association would be official, and the resulting product would by definition hew to the ANA Grading Standard. Although numismatics is dominated by the people for whom profit trumps all other metrics, I suspect that some pretty heavyweight graders would jump ship to such an organization, especially if promised similar money with less pressure. Heaven knows I'd prostrate myself before them to be part of such a thing.
I think that ship has already sailed and the wake has dissipated. Even the ANA's "official" Grading Standards book (the current edition) describes it merely as a starting point. The ANA book actually "slow walks" away from its own standards, odd as that sounds. Why would we go "back to" ANA standards when they ANA itself is backing off them? Have you taken the ANA's "Grading Coins Today" course? Half of it is exceptions to the ANA standards!!!
They are, to an extent, a dog being wagged by the money tail as well, but to my mind it's the corrupt TPG system which has forced them there. It could only benefit them to retake control of the grading standards conversation, which would be part and parcel of the effort. You would expect your PCGS 64 to be an ANA 63. And with enough market penetration, it would be the rising tide which lifted all boats, except of course, those occupied by the existing TPG's.
I've been writing about and preaching about a universal set of grading standards being adopted and strictly adhered to for almost 17 years now. But it is NEVER going to happen ! It can't happen because it would be counterproductive for ALL of the TPGs. Plain and simple they loosened grading standards starting back in 2004 because they ran out of coins to grade. Oh sure they could keep grading the moderns, but that's only half their business. The other half is all classic coins - and they don't make those anymore. Those are the coins they ran out of ! Where do you guys think all those classic coins come from ? They come out of other slabs where they've already been graded is where they come from. And they're sent in because everybody knows they'll be upgraded. But even that wasn't enough for the TPGs, they weren't getting enough classic coins to regrade at first. So in 2007 - after 20 years of refusing to do it and promising not to ever do it, they suddenly agreed to start slabbing, - not grading but slabbing all the same and thus getting their fees - problem coins ! And that opened up a whole new market for them. The bottom line guys is that they are going to do whatever they have to do to keep the money coming in - your money of course. And the only way there is to do that is to change grading standards - repeatedly.
I simply do not agree with you, Doug, that we are anywhere near running out of classic coins to grade for the first time through. I see them week after week at local coin shows and local auctions in magnificent quantities. Three-figure, four-figure, and even five-figure coins by the dozens and hundreds. All raw. Most have been completely "off the market" for way longer than slabbing has existed. I see a lot of garbage, too, but the idea that "all the coins worth slabbing have already been slabbed" is as silly as any idea ever was.
I really hate this idea that in order for a classic coin to meet with the coin community's approval, it must be slabbed, because I can't believe that it changes the coin in any material way. Collectors have gotten lazy, they don't know the standards and they don't care to learn. They want to be spoonfed by someone who guarantees that the coin grades "X" and the fact that what the TPG says that it grades matters to them troubles me deeply.
It's primarily an American disease, Mike. Many European collectors who successfully bid at, say, an NYINC auction, take many of those freshly slabbed and graded coins and crack them out because that's the way they like them. Maybe it's because they haven't been infected with the "stupid virus" we have, also known as Registry Sets.
As many of you know, Q. David Bowers has been tackling the gradeflation problem frequently in Coin World columns: Examining inflation of grading: Q. David Bowers, Coin World, 15 February 2016 Q. David Bowers: Grading an undefined hobby area in determining coin's condition, Coin World, 29 August 2016 Q. David Bowers: How grading criteria has changed for U.S. coins over last decades, Coin World, 05 September 2016 When did an Indian Head cent with missing letters in LIBERTY become Fine?, Coin World, 12 September 2016 Q. David Bowers: With grading standards established, why can’t everyone agree?, Coin World, 19 September 2016 With so many grades and so much inconsistency in grading, what is a collector to do?, Coin World, 26 September 2016 Q. David Bowers: How gradeflation encourages resubmissions, Coin World, 03 October 2016 Q. David Bowers: How to be an astute U.S. coin buyer in 2016, Coin World, 31 October 2016 Note: The dates refer to the column's publication in the print issue of Coin World.
Agreed. Some people crack out slabs anyway and there will always be at least some percentage of these types
It also may give the TPG a way out of their grading guarantee. If a coin is resubmitted and it goes from X on the old label to Y on the new one, since the scales and standards are different how can you tell if it was a "downgrade" that they owe compensation for? And then about a year or so later they stated grading the problem coins as well. True but it is spreading. Even here in the US the EACers, the great bastion of collectors of raw coins, is seeing more and more slabs creeping into collections
my thought exactly, conder. This gives the TPGs an out and lets them save face all without a dime of compensation to the people who lost in the first place, the collectors
Re: 80% accuracy It was my understanding that this figure represented the percentage of coins which were graded with the same grade by the first two graders and did not need a review by a third. I wonder now what percentage of the coins that needed a third review were accepted with the higher of the two grades? I believe that coinflation is partially the result of most third-reviewed coins going to the higher of the two grades.
