Big One = PCGS Secure Plus

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Doug,

I'm not that hard to please. If they could tell me that their machines were 99.99% accurate that would be cool with me. Which is only about 1 out of 10,000 coins... I understand with any technology their is a chance of an error. But when there is a chance that a coin I send in can mistakenly be called a "stolen" coin (no matter how small that chance is) I want to know what my odds are.

I mean DNA test are only that accurate.

 

If a coin is considered stolen, what then? Will this technology hold up in a court of law? Does PCGS have a legal right to hold onto a stolen coin? How would the courts prosecute someone who submitted a stolen coin and lived in another country? If my state quarter came back stolen, would anyone even care?

 

Pretty much... I'd like a little clarity. Telling me that you have scanned tens of thousands of coins is one thing... was their a factor of error or not?

I just read where Don Willis said that

"we reworked a lot of coins in our testing. We actually had to rework the coin to the point of destroying it before it would not be recognized."

That sounds like they had to significantly change the coin for the machine to notice a difference... That sentence alone makes me uneasy. Who's to say it doesn't go the other way too?

 

Interesting...makes sense. I cleaned a heavily toned (almost black) 1825 half only to find the toning covered a harsh cleaning it had sometime earlier.

One more question if you don't mind...:bow:

I'm trying to wrap my mind around the numismatic purpose (or any other purpose for that matter) of the "BIG 1"; specifically, the laser fingerprinting...how this technology would actually be applied. What are your thoughts?

The "BIG 1" seems to be advertised as some sort of "Coin LoJack"...but when you think about it, it would only work if the coin was cracked out of it's slab...

1) If it's in it's SecurityPlus slab...why bother?

2) If it's in another slab, the "fingerprint" may not be easily read through another slab...especially if the slab was scratched up.

Therefore, it seems like this process would only work if...

1) The coin was a previously scanned SecurityPlus coin;

2) The coin was cracked out and resubmitted raw to PCGS for grading; and

3) The coin hasn't been altered in any significant way.

(I suppose if you knew who stole it and busted them at the point AFTER the coin was cracked out, but BEFORE it was altered/resold...then there MAY be some fingerprint evidence that would be admissible in court IF the laser process could withstand technical scrutiny)

Presumably, a thief that was smart enough to crack out a coin would be smart enough NOT to resubmit to PCGS. If the coin has changed hands
and/or has been slabbed by another company (such as NGC), there could be a legal Brew-Ha-Ha if PCGS tried to confiscate the coin based on their "proprietary" methods.

Each time I try to walk through a logical scenario how this "fingerprinting" would work, I hit a brick wall. :headbang::headbang::headbang:

 

I would...:hug:

 

I find the SecurePlus announcement interesting and unlike many, I am willing to wait to see how it plays out before I make up my mind about it. I suspect few collectors will use the service for their existing coins but it may be an attractive option for dealers that are looking for new ways to market some of their coins.

I am sympathetic to persons who think this is unnecessarily complicating things or otherwise taking the fun out of the hobby. But I think the simple answer is that no one is being forced to use the new service -- they are keeping the old service in place as well. And most collectors don't submit coins anyway.

Finally, anyone that thinks CAC is going away is in my opinion uninformed about CAC's business model. It's founded on the fact that John Albanese is a highly respected grader who was also willing to guarantee against coin doctoring and to make a market in the coins CAC stickers. The only way PCGS could truly begin to "compete" with CAC would be to hire a single grader to handle the plus grading who is on the same reputation level as Albanese. Not sure that is possible and in any event that is not what PCGS is doing.

 

....lots and lots of discussion here. can you imagine the debates when

computer grading comes up again? and you KNOW it will come! :kewl:

 

But it doesn't need to think. It only needs to be programmed to measure a particular amount of surface wear and assign it a number, 1-70. Of course, that's not all to grading. So we'll still need a human to modify for eye appeal. It wouldn't be surprising to me if we ended up with a dual grade: one from the computer, one from the grader.

 

....you may have something there, doug. i just got a flash of programming congress!

it would be the same results! :bow:

 

My guess is if any company ever comes out with machine grading, it won't be PCGS because they're the market leader. It will be someone trying to claim they have a revolutionary way to grade coins. But I agree with Doug generally -- hard to see how a machine or computer can acccount for some of the subjective components of grading, particularly eye appeal.

 

I'm sure with enough creative programming, it can be done. It wouldn't be simple, though. The machine would have to accurately measure the wear, number of marks and their severity, reflectivity (to assess toning), and color. You could assign a numerical value to each of these variables, and then create a formula to give you the grade. Of course it wouldn't be the same, but it would at least be standardized.

I'm not saying PCGS is doing this. But I think its theoretically possible, probably even with today's technology.

 

Surely they can, neural networks have been doing this for years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervised_learning

 

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

I want this guy's autograph!

 

This show up in the mail this am.

http://www.pcgs.com/articles/articl...e&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ezine03302010