Hi everyone, I have been hearing for quite some type from quite a few people that PCGS/NGC have been "tightening" their grading over the past 6 months or so...but I'm still quite confused as to what exactly is happening. Would a coin that would have graded MS65 or PR65 a year ago no longer make that grade today? How much "tightening" are we talking about here....anyone have any ideas? Does it vary with series and/or grade? Anyone have any personal experience with this? As always, any guidance is always much appreciated...
I personally haven't heard that. What I have heard (and seen) is over the last several years the TPGs have become more loose with their grading. So, a coin that grades MS66 today may have only been an MS65 10 years ago. So, if they are tightening up (which I doubt), it would probably be a good thing.
Just about anyone who reads most of the coin forums will know this - every couple of months, sometimes even every month, you will see reports that the TPG's are either tightening or loosening their standards. Now if this were really the case the evidence would be easy to see. However, what is it exactly that these people base these reports on ? Often, it will based on but a single coin and a single report made by a person who happens to disagree with the grade assigned to their coin. Other times it may even be a few different people making such reports. But consider this, NGC slabs approx 150,000 coins per month; PCGS 100,000 per month. So out of a quarter of a million coins slabbed every month, how many would one have to see and judge to be able to determine a change in the grading standards used by the TPG's ? Would 10% be enough, 20% ? Even at such low numbers for a valid sample we are talking about 25,000 to 50,000 coins. Do the math, that would mean that these people making such claims would have to see 1,000 to 2,000 coins per day. And of course they would also have to have the ability to be able to judge whether or not the TPG's had changed their standards. And to have that ability each of these people would necessarily also have to be familiar enough with the grading standards of each of the two TPG's to even recognize that the standards had changed. Now how many such people with this skill do you think there are out there ? And of those with the skill how many of them do you think there are who see 1,000 to 2,000 of the newly slabbed coins per day ? I think you should get the picture by now.
Thanks for the insight and advice - all makes good sense. I guess I had just heard that this situation of supposed tightening was the "talk of the show" among dealers at a number of the major national coin shows recently, but certainly I don't really know the truth myself. Many were attributing it to CAC and its influence on the market. I've also heard a number of stories about dealers cracking out significant groups (~10-20 coins) of 64-65s from PCGS holders that they felt would upgrade to 65s-66s and instead saw virtually all of them downgrade at least a point. But again...these are still small samples and it's true that this is just what I've heard. Maybe I shouldn't be so concerned about submitting my coins right now after all...
And they would have to know WHEN the particular coins they were looking at were slabbed. If they were receiving them directly from the grading service they would know that, but if they are looking at slabs in the marketplace or pieces being brought to them they would not know. So if you are comparing a "now" coin to a "then" coin, but can't say when "Then" was. How can you say what is happening? Then may have been two years ago, or it may have been last week. The only time when it come close to having any validity is when you are comparing coins from two widely separated generations of slab. But then there are other factor that have to be included. High end resubmissions that tend to lower the average quality of coins remaining in older slabs, or fresh material that ha recently come back on the market which hasn't been cherried and runs higher quality than average. Factors such as these make it very difficult to truly track changes in standards.
