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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 1882376, member: 112&quot;]Well, there&#039;s a couple other things that people often forget, or simply weren&#039;t ever aware of it to begin with. That being that when the contributing ANA members all got together and developed market grading back in &#039;86, the same guys that started up the TPGs, were all a part of that. In other words, the originators of the TPGs, as ANA members of note, were all a part of the discussions and decisions that took place within the ANA.</p><p><br /></p><p>But there were a whole lot more other ANA members, who never did have anything to do with the TPGs, that decided that we, that the hobby, needed the market grading system. After all there were only a handful of people that got together and started the TPGs. And one guy, John Albanese, not only helped start PCGS and NGC both, he is also largely responsible for starting up CAC.</p><p><br /></p><p>So yeah, the number of people who are largely responsible for the TPGs and CAC being formed can be counted on 1 hand. But to say that the TPGs are responsible for developing and adopting the market grading system, no that just isn&#039;t the case.</p><p><br /></p><p>The other thing is that the grading standards found in the ANA books are not grading standards that the ANA developed on their own and said that everybody should be using them. But rather that the ANA is merely writing down and publishing the accepted grading standards that are currently in use in the market by the majority of the numismatic community.</p><p><br /></p><p>The thing that goes along with that is that the people who control the TPGs and decide what grading standards each TPG will use as their own, are not the majority of the numismatic community. Instead they are a very small group of people that has managed to get a lot of collectors and dealers to accept what they do and how they grade coins. That doesn&#039;t mean that the collectors and dealers as a whole agree with the grades assigned by the TPGs and the standards that they use. It merely means that of the options available to them, what NGC and PCGS do is the best choice they have.</p><p><br /></p><p>Think about it, what other options are there ? They could go back to how it used to be when every collector and dealer assigned their own grades, or they can use the other TPGs, what everybody calls lower tier or bottom tier TPGs, or they can use NGC and PCGS. So yes, a lot of people use NGC and PCGS. But a lot of people also discount the grades assigned by them and decide what the grade really is themselves. They only use the two companies to make the buying and selling easier because the plastic buyers so far outnumber everybody else.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yeah, there are some who almost seem to think that the TPGs can do no wrong. That if they say the grade of a coin is XX then that&#039;s what the grade of the coin is and there is no disputing it. Then there are those will say, no they screwed up on this one or they screwed up on that one, but they don&#039;t screw up on very many. Then there are those who will say they hardly ever get one right anymore.</p><p><br /></p><p>Myself, I used to be in the middle group. I was for a lot of years. TPG grading used to agree with my personal grading the vast majority of the time. But over the last 10 years that has changed, I am no longer in the middle group. Now my grading and the grading standards that I follow hasn&#039;t changed any, not a bit. So when it first started happening the obvious explanation was that the TPG grading had changed, that it had gotten looser.</p><p><br /></p><p>At first I was surprised, thought that couldn&#039;t be right. But as time went on it just got worse. And then I started picking up on things, noticing articles that said the same thing I was thinking, noticing population reports and how much they were changing. Then I remembered that the TPGs had already changed grading standards twice. So why should it be any surprise that they changed them again ? Simple answer, it shouldn&#039;t be any surprise at all.</p><p><br /></p><p>And then the TPGs started changing this policy or that policy, and in every single case the change was on the side of loosening, making it easier for coins to get this grade or that designation - every time. This only added more confirmation that the obvious answer was the correct answer. That the TPGs had greatly loosened their grading standards, and at a specific point in time, and had only gotten worse from there.</p><p><br /></p><p>All of the evidence that this is true is out there, it is plain to see. All you have to do is look at it and be willing to acknowledge what it is telling you.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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