I am looking at gettinga few slabbed representative Silver Eagles & keep seeing some that are described as "DCAM" or "Deep cameo" and some listed as "Ultra cameo". Silly Newbie question that I know I should know by now, but.......What is the difference between the two?? Thanks, Bill
The two are interchangeable. PCGS uses DCAM, and NGC uses ULTRACAM. They both represent the highest level deep cameo.
has anyone compared two of the exact same coins, one ultra cameo, one deep cameo? are they identical? BUncirculated, you say they have different standards, is one tougher than the other? I know with PCGS their other grade is just regular cameo, does NGC have two levels also?
NGC has just "Cameo" too. It's more common on pre 1960 coins. They DCAM and ULTCAM pretty much will look the same everytime, it's just the way that proofs are struck now.
When I said they have different standards I was referring to designations in general. One example would be the FBL designation on Franklin halves. PCGS looks only at the bottom set of bell lines, while NGC assesses both sets of bell lines when determining an FBL designation. And yes, NGC uses cameo too.
PCGS uses cameo too. From what I have seen...both companies are pretty much the same when it comes to Cameo designations. That is not the case for PL and DMPL.
In the realm of DCAM (PCGS) vs UCAM (NGC), it is my personal experience that although both are premium designations, I would say that NGC is tougher on UCAM than PCGS on DCAM. I just think that the NGC coins need to pass stronger rigor in order to garner the highest designation. And if asked which way would be more difficult to cross-over, I would say that most if not all of the UCAM NGC coins would cross but not necessarily vice versa. Given the choice of assembling a set from NGC or PCGS, I would (and did) choose NGC for my UCAM proof set.
The way I see it, NGC is trying to one up PCGS by calling the same condition ULTRA. Ultra has to be better than Deep, right?