Saw this posted on youtube. A recent video with Vagi and the NGC grading of ancients. Pretty interesting.
That is a great video, he's well spoken and clearly immensely knowledgeable. Though, as he said: "...No one is truly an expert in the whole range." As some one who has just begun (I mean, within the past month) doing a little research into ancients, that is a very comforting sentiment.
Grading ancients is pretty straight forward, unless you want to get into the modern grading nonsense like giving a rare denarius an MS-58 as I once saw a dealer do. I do object to "mint state" being used by NGC Ancients for obvious reasons. All ancient coins have been cleaned...So how can something cleaned be mint state? You could say it is a gXF (which means exceptional preservation and expertly cleaned) but it just won't be mint state after thousands of years in the ground and cleaning. I have to admit this [warning: controversial statement] I've actually considered slabbing simply because it might be a better way to store and make sure the coins are easy to sell by my decendants after I pass away, but just submitting what I currently have would cost over $2,100.00, (that's for about 100 coins) and I have a small collection by the standards of many people in this room. How many ancient coins would I have to give up on just to get a plastic holder. At least 20 to 30 denarii, or almost two dozen Greek beauties. I don't think it's worth it.
Thanks Mat for sharing that, as I have his reference books I was very interested to see what he was like.
Thanks for posting the video link. It was great to watch & I hope other folks will take the time to check it out. In addition to listening to Mr V it was pretty nice to see all the coins.
As so often is the case I have little problem with the grading concepts as used by NGC but dislike immensely the combining that with placing the coin in sealed slabs. For years we had David Sear issuing opinions for sale with the coin identified by a photo. That would require the purchaser of his services to be able to match up certificates filled with information with coins that still allowed handling. I understand why modern coins need to be entombed to prevent degradation or switching identical types but this is not the situation with ancients. Instead we have coins turned into commodities for the benefit of those who have no desire to learn. The only information provided is the grade (including the on/off 'fine style'). The ID information is really minimal as is the chance that the buyer of the coin will benefit in any way other than inflating the market price. About the time I might be tending to accept their practices, they downgraded to coins not assigned strike and surface ratings for a discount. The samples we saw in the video all struck me as coins that could have been part of a bulk lot (all Greek silver, all about the same condition) so I do not know if we are getting the 5 seconds of expert services for the full price or lower tier service. I have to wonder if the coins were presorted by a lower level grader so all the hands we saw had to do is type in a note on the few that were not correctly prescreened. We saw nothing that would require cracking a book or otherwise not be serviceable in the five seconds in hand. I wonder what percentage of coins graded fit this category. Mr. Vagi is most certainly correct that he could never know what to expect in each box. I know if I were doing it, I would be good and tired of seeing another box of MS Alexanders. I enjoyed the video and agree with 90% of the comments made. Unfortunately this positive attitude toward NGC work does not transfer to the other brands of expert services but beginners do not necessarily know to make the distinction.
Just watched the video, thanks. Full disclosure: I have met David on several occasions including ANA Summer Seminar (I was not in his course). Also, I have posted that I have a few ancients that I bought while working for a dealer selling everything (us, foreign, paper money, and ancients. Short and sweet, I am virtually totally ignorant about ancient coins however, I own the Sayles Set, Seaby, Becker, lots of auction cats., plus access to more reference books. That said, this was a film. What we saw is probably not realistic. The hands belong to David. In the film he spent from 8 to 27 seconds looking at the coins and rarely used his hand lens. The NGC Ancient Division has grown enough to have needed to bring in more staff. They are doing something right and needed. Remember this was a film. 1. IMO, there is no way anyone can examine, grade, and enter one of the ancients in the film unless the coins have already been attributed, entered into the computer, and the tracking labels applied to each coin in the box. That is how it is done at every TPGS. All the graders need to do is authenticate and enter their grade into the computer. 2. Yes they get groups of the same coin. The majority of coins on the market are not rare. 3. No bad rap on NGC or David but this I know for certain. There is NO WAY any TPGS is going to detect a state-of-the-art counterfeit the way it is shown in the film. I suspect that someone must need to occasionally check the Internet plus previously graded coins, and reference books. This is in spite of the fact that most successful long-time professional dealers (no need to name a few) can pick up an ancient and tell if it is genuine, fake, or needs research in a very short period of time and be correct 97% of the time. One of my seminar instructors put it this way...When I authenticate a coin and it goes out in a slab, tens of thousands of people check my work hoping to prove my opinion wrong! All of us here are in that group helping to keep the TPGS honest whether we like/use ancient slabs or not.
The problem is that once a coin is in a slab, double checking the authentication becomes that much harder. You can't see the edges well, you can't weight or measure the coin with any degree of accuracy, and too many people take a graded coin as authentic despite th fact NGC does not guarantee authenticity for ancients...so I can easily see a problem coin getting through and going undiagnosed once it makes it into a slab.
You and everyone here knows that counterfeits don't get detected even when they are not in a slab and all the measurements you mention + educated eyes fail us. AFAIK, the boys who make excellent copies know more about what the piece should weigh than most dealers! Your point about the edge is a better reason, however, the prong mounts are there for that reason. Besides, nothing really deceptive is cast anymore. The edges look authentic.
