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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Troodon, post: 324434, member: 4626&quot;]A coin&#039;s grade isn&#039;t engraved somewhere on the coin.&nbsp; Anybody&#039;s opinion on its grade is just that, <i>an opinion</i>.&nbsp; Is the opinion of a movie critic who has a degree in film and has seen several movies any better than the opinion of someone who has just seen one?&nbsp; No, because it is still just an opinion, and by definition all opinions are subjective.</p><p><br /></p><p>Whehter a coin is authentic or not is a slightly different story... it either is, or it isn&#039;t.&nbsp; I&#039;d point out that even so-called &quot;professional&quot; graders have been fooled by fakes before... PCGS at one point had to admit they slabbed several New Orleans Morgan dollars that turned out to be fakes made in the 1940&#039;s.&nbsp; It&#039;s not like the TPGs are infallible.&nbsp; If people who do it professionally can be fooled, so can anyone.&nbsp; However with education, you can get better at catching fakes.&nbsp; Anybody can do that, don&#039;t need to be in the business of authentication to catch a fake.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>A really good counterfeit can even fool the TPGs.&nbsp; See my earlier comment about the fakes that got past PCGS.&nbsp; Conversely I can point to a thread here where I posted a genuine coin here that about 1/4 of the responders thought was fake.&nbsp; Anybody can make mistakes, and the TPGs are not immune.&nbsp; If I had $10,000 to spend on a coin I can also afford the same education that any grader from the TPGs have.&nbsp; (If you can afford coins that cost that much you&#039;d be an idiot not to educate yourself before spending that kind of money!)&nbsp; Wouldn&#039;t guarantee I&#039;d be able to catch it but I&#039;d have at least as much a chance as they would.&nbsp; BTW I never said that authentication isn&#039;t worth paying for... I&#039;ll concede that much.&nbsp; It&#039;s professional <i>grading</i> that I think is a rip-off, because unlike authentication (a coin is either real, or it isn&#039;t), grading is purely subjective.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>There&#039;s your assertion again that there&#039;s a &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot; grade.&nbsp; TPGs are part of the problem here, not the solution... the belief that it can be firmly established what a coin&#039;s precise grade is and its value can be established because of that would not even exist if TPGs weren&#039;t around.&nbsp; BTW I think I probably could... but guess what, if I can&#039;t tell the difference between a coin worth $400 if it&#039;s EF 45 and $2200 if it&#039;s AU 50... I&#039;m buying the EF 45!&nbsp; Paying an extra $1800 for a 5 point difference you can barely see is just plain idiotic and if nobody was willing to do that, the coin&#039;s value would drop at the higher grades for lack of demand.&nbsp; If TPGs didn&#039;t exist there wouldn&#039;t be the huge price difference between a given coin in say MS65 as in MS66, since there wouldn&#039;t be anyone to give a &quot;professional&quot; opinion that there&#039;s a signficant difference.&nbsp; Prices would be subjective and based on demand generated by the coin&#039;s eye appeal, not based on belief in someone&#039;s &quot;professional&quot; opinion of the grade.</p><p><br /></p><p>TPGs are part of the problem, not part of the solution.&nbsp; I firmly believe that sending a single cent to a TPG for their opinion on a coin&#039;s grade, or paying a single cent more for a coin in a plastic holder with someone&#039;s grading opinion on it than you would for that same coin raw, is a complete waste of money.&nbsp; It&#039;s just an <i>opinion</i>, not a fact, and no amount of training or repetition makes any one person&#039;s opinion better than anyone else&#039;s.&nbsp; Certaintly doesn&#039;t make it worth paying for.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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