Competitive NGC collections / sets

Too much money for the cheapo's.......

 

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True, but they could impact the sale price if people start trashing them based off pictures which may not be the best representation which does happen all the time.

 

Bob Campbell is a great photographer! So is Todd Pollock! We have a couple others here who are excellent, but I don't want to mention their names without prior approval.

Chris

 

Oh please, I can find fault with the photo of a dog walking across the street.

 

I know there's some great ones off there, but if were talking the upper sets which are usually the locked ones I don't blame them for not wanting to send 6 and 7 figure packages through the mail just for some pictures. A lot of those coins in the top sets are at least four figures.

It'd be nice to have pictures of them all, but I can understand why some of them don't even if the answer is as simple as they just don't care about getting pictures of them up.

 

Aren't we just talking about a label here. An ugly MS68 and an eye candy MS68 garner the same points correct? The registry game sounds contradictory to buy the coin not the label. What do you win if you have the most points? Bragging rights.

 

Then they're not of the coin community, and they only care about their little corner, unwilling to share with the rest of us. Sad........

 

Cripes. I never seen an ugly '68.

 

Well that is true. Still, does the winner get a trophy or plaque?

 

In terms of registry points they're worth the same. But those top set coins are very expensive, in almost all series so outside of just the points for the registry there is a lot more at play. Very few if any of the elite sets buy up a coin regardless of look just for the points. A lot will give up a few points for a coin they love instead of just going for max points.

That describes the overwhelming majority of collectors.

Plaques from PCGS and an award and some pedigree benefits, not sure about NGC.

 

Yeah, it's like someone buying a Rolls Royce for $200K and then wants to park it under a tent.

Chris

 

I think folks that do win awards and have pics will feel better about it if there aren't better sets posted that didn't get an award because of a lack of pics. No pics, no posts, no awards.

One problem with requiring pics is that a certain amount of monitoring for quality and authenticity would be needed. If left to software, folks could just post happy faces or a pic of their grandma or (more likely) a pic nabbed from the net to meet the requirement.

I've encountered one instance where a registrant posted a picture of a coin than wasn't his. The odd thing was that the coin that he did own and have in the registry was higher grade than the one in the pic. I think he was a little lazy, grabbed a pic off the net and posted it. I pointed the "error" out to him via registry email, and he quickly substituted a pic of his coin.

Cal

 

I am hooked on the competitive sets as well. I am in the top 50 for American Silver Eagles, and I have the top rated set for the NIUE Disney Characters set. I started the Disney collection thinking that when it is time to sell, whether it is by me or my heirs, I can sell it to not only coin collectors, but Disney collectors as well.

I also have complete sets of graded state quarters and the presidential dollars. But my rankings are not that high in those categories because they are only 69s.

The one thing I do not like about the silver eagle collection. They list every variation as being part of the collection. So if it has an NGC label, it's part of the set. So all of the regular MS eagles, from like 2012 on, have just the regular MS annotation, plus the struck at West Point, struck at San Francisco, etc. Now struck at Philadelphia from 2015-2017. It's crazy. There have been 31 years of eagles, along with proofs, burnished, etc. But according to NGC, there are currently 110 different eagles. Soon to be 111 as soon as the limited edition set comes out and graded eagles from that set hit the market.

 

I found it addictive. For awhile there I was loading everything I had to use the coin manager (though overall I find it a bit clunky) and had a bit too much fun making sets with random coins where I may not really either have a formal collection (like just a few with no intention of completing) or something.

After realizing the obsession was WAY TOO MUCH (and that I was buying some stuff based on how it fit in a set I didn't really care about) I did a big purge awhile back. I'm in the early phases of another and just watched my rank drop, with relief.

The funds should then be re-deployed to fill spots in the sets I DO care about, though the newps will realize less points as the outgoing is the modern/bullion-y stuff vs. the incoming being older coins. NGC does have a way of rewarding the modern more than the not-modern.

As for the photos, well, sometimes it's hard to keep up. In the beginning I added tons of coins all at once and before I had ANY photo capabilities. My best set did get to meet BluCC coins, but when talking 600+ coins, it was not feasible to do so either logistically or financially. Since then I've learned to take my own shots and do keep plugging away.

Ideally a WINNING set should have at least 90% photos. However, even there I'm deficient as for a bunch of my #1s I just haven't gotten to yet. In the last year I've gone from about 5% imaged to 17%. So, between purges and plugging away, I should be 100% within a decade .

Seriously though, I got to play around with the beta for the new format and it is VERY photo oriented so I think once that gets implemented a lot of people will do better. I hope. The sets will look silly without SOME photos!

Obscured sets can be an organizational tool. I ended up obscuring my duplicates sets...I like having them so I can see which ones are my second bests in case I ever purge them (hah!), but no one needs to waste time looking at them. Eventually I will probably make those obscured custom sets so no one has to even notice them. That's a bit of work, and I don't have unlimited time so, the word eventually is key .

Here is this year's announcement--not just a plaque. I think the wording is a bit ambiguous. There are #1s for each category...but then there are the 'best of' awards too. I'm assuming the plaque/grading credits are for the 'best of' winners only.https://www.ngccoin.com/news/article/6126/ (If not I'm going to really regret dumping a set I just deleted ).

 

A few years back I had several top 10 registry sets (Jefferson and Roosevelt proofs) at NGC and admit I did have fun putting them together. Since I was getting close to retirement I decided to buy a second home and selling most of my collection was a necessity. Now that the smoke has settled since my retirement I've decided to get back into the hobby, concentrating on other series. Since NGC no longer allows PCGS coins in their registry sets I'll probably never go that route again. I've purchased more raw coins this past year than I ever did. I think this actually made me a better grader since I was buying the coin, not the slab. I still buy slabbed coins now and then but I think I have a better appreciation for the coin now.

 

I've often wondered, when the TPGs have photos of the coins in their database already for cert verification/true view/etc. why don't they just load the photos they already have by default when you enter the coins into your sets? If you have better photos to use, you should then be able to replace them.

 

PCGS auto-loads the TrueViews or old secure plus scans into the sets. Not sure why NGC doesn't

 

NGC site looks older and is written in ASP. Might be a pain/expensive to maintain and/or modify. PCGS site much more modern looking. Funny, their holders are the opposite in attractiveness as far as I'm concerned. Just a guess from a programmer's eye.

 

Directly from NGC:

Thank you for the inquiry.

The photos on the NGC coin site are proprietary, low-resolution photos. They are taken for certification verification and for security purposes. We do have imaging services available which include much higher quality resolution images. If you are interested, please contact NGC Customer Service at 1-800-642-2646. Or, you may take your own photos and upload them via your personal computer to your NGC Registry sets. You may reach us at registry@ngccoin.com, if you need assistance with this. We also do prefer to keep certification numbers private. It is up to the discretion of the owner if s/he would like to display a cert. number in an image. Thank you.

 

I'm hoping to see their upgrade soon. I saw the beta version awhile back and it's much more modern, user friendly (linking to pops/values as well), and photo oriented. Very much more 'device viewing' friendly too.