I'll never have to worry about having a $1M coin to grade, but on the PCGS form the cost for grading such a coin is 1% of value plus $250 plus $5 for Secure service. Any transportation costs would be additions. I'm thinking that the grading fee for such a coin must be negotiable, especially if the submitter is a big dealer or auction house. It's a good advertisement for the grading service to have such valuable coins in their holders. Do you think Brent Pogue paid PCGS 1% of the value of his collection to have it graded? Cal
I doubt it. Like you I will never have to worry about it either, would be a far reach that my total collection would even come close to adding up to that before I pass it along.
I doubt the Pogues paid that fee. Personally I think they got their coins graded for free since PCGS and NGC both really want those types of collections. Even though those prices are listed when you're talking about million dollar rarities I don't think many if any of those are paying close to the listed fee. The advertisement of the coin is worth more than charging that fee would bring. With that said if you can afford million dollar coins that grading fee really doesn't mean anything to your wallet
There are some things that I will never have to worry about. This is one of them. I imagine the Pogues got some kind of deal.
Never. If you have a high grade quality coin, everything is negotiable. From the grading to the fees from an auction house. They compete among themselves for the prestige. They would wave all fees to the have their name associated with this type of coin.
I think that's more to discourage the poor souls who think their glue-covered Lincoln is a million dollar coin.
You have to remember, though, that the risk the TPG takes goes up with the higher value. If they slab a $1 million dollar coin and it turns out to be fake, they have a million dollar liability now. Would anyone here like to risk having a million dollar judgement against them for a $40 grading fee? Of course, you can say they should spot the fake. However, in todays climate of high quality Chinese fakes, I don't think its a non-existent risk.
A 10k grading fee won't make a bit of difference in covering a payout like that. Also you have to remember million dollar coins aren't being sent through the grading streamline. They're being examined very closely by the best they have and probably need to be signed off on from Hall as well. You can bet the experts they have for that series are being used on coins of that value.
Of course they will use their best, and of course 10k will not pay a million claim. However, the vast majority of 10k grading fees will never have a claim, but each time they do it there is SOME risk of a claim. Risk managers will calculate that as a hard number giving a large number of submissions to evaluate their exposure.
There are risks you mitigate and risks you just accept. If you are selling $2 coins on eBay you don't buy insurance and accept the occasional (rare) loss. If you are looking at $1m payouts, you buy insurance and setup processes and systems to ensure you don't need to make a claim. Insurance companies are happy to accept the premium payment and work with you to reduce claims. That buys you access to additional experts.
That is true, but the number of million dollar coins is fairly small, and their diagnostics are very well known. The odds that a high quality Chinese fake of one could slip past is vanishingly small. Especially since it would have to copy a known specimen. (There aren't too many previously unknown million dollar coins popping out of the woodwork nowadays.)
Like mentioned that is what insurance is for, and they won't be slabbing any million dollar coins they have any doubts about. They pay out claims pretty regularly some years even more than a million dollars worth. In the grand scheme of their total liability for what they have graded a million dollars is very small for the total value of their slabs. It makes no business sense to chase away coins that automatically raise the perception of your company and pay for themselves in free advertising over collecting a small grading fee in comparison to the value of the coin
