Are PCGS/ NGC graded "70" coins actually perfect?

It's pretty simple, money. They needed to boost submission numbers or risk going out of business. And the best way to do that was to loosen grading standards and give people what they wanted - higher grades on their coins.

It started before that, but by the end of 2003 they made the decision to change because submissions of older classic coins had dropped off significantly, very significantly. By then moderns had become over half of their business. But the numbers of classics were still dropping and getting worse because the number of classics was finite - most of them had already been slabbed, many more than once already.

So, how do you boost that ? What can you do to cause classics to be submitted again and boost submission numbers ? Change the grading standards, don't tell anybody, just do it. Once you do, classics that are sent in are returned with higher grades than they ever received before. People notice such things, so they in turn send in their coins, and they also get higher grades. So they send in more of their coins. Bear in mind, all of these coins had already been graded.

Also, by loosening the standards, you increase the numbers of moderns being sent in because now they are suddenly being graded being graded as 70s, and in huge numbers. And pretty much everybody who knew the market, also knew that the population of 70 coins was so low as to be almost non existent - and they sold for a TON ! And who wouldn't want to jump on that bandwagon while the jumping was good ?

Of course it didn't take any time at all for people in the know to figure it out. They noticed right away, just like I did. So they jumped on the bandwagon too. But the general population, they jumped on as well, they just didn't know what was going on. But by the time a few years had passed - even they figured it out and submission numbers began to drop again.

By now it's 2007, gross overgrading has gotten so bad that CAC comes into existence to add the missing level of confidence that collectors had lost in the TPGs. So now what do the TPGs do to boost numbers again ? Well for one they changed their 20 years long standing policy that they would never grade problem coins - and they began grading problem coins. That gave them a boost, just not enough of one. So they loosened standards even more than they had before, and that boosted them some more.

Anybody who wants can go and look at what the current population numbers are, and compared to the numbers I posted - they are huge ! And it wasn't, and isn't just 70 modern coins, the same huge increases in grades across the board for classic coins are also there.

Now there's still a group of people who simply don't want to believe any of this even when the evidence is right in front of their faces and always has been. Why ? Because believing it just ruins everything they had always believed in. Believing it forces them to believe that their 65s are really only 63s or worse. That their 67s that they are so proud of are really on 64s. That their AU58s and AU55s are really only 40s or 45s. People just don't want to believe things like that, because if they do - it just ruins their whole day.

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