I have a question regarding insurance and TPG. I have been reading a current e-Bay thread how grading is subjective and an opinion. With the likes of SGS out there over grading everything MS-70 and PR-70 especially on modern coins. The question??? Lets say a newbie collector has invested heavily in SGS highly overgraded coins and bought thinking he was getting in at bargain basement prices. The collector purchases insurance equal to the coin book pricing year after year and increasing the insured amount reflecting those prices year after year. Some 10 years later the collection is stolen and the collector has kept very detailed records including video's and scans of each individual coin. Do you think that the insurance company would be willing to shell out current pricing on SGS slabbed coins?
I think I see where you are going with this, and you make a great point! If an insurance company refuses to recognize the SGS 70 as being as valuable as the CDN says a 70 coin should be, then that same standard should hold up in a court (or the ins co would just pay the claim to avoid extra legal fees). On the other hand, if you can document that you've lost $X in coins (that you have receipts for) and you have an active insurance policy that covers that amount of loss, then I would expect the ins co to pay the claim for the loss/insured amount. hmmm, an interesting thought, I suppose that over-grading like that could lead to a scam to commit insurance fraud. Scary thought, there...
i thought about this before. reminded me of the old episode of Married with children when they had thier car stolen and then told the cops they had the mona lisa among other things in the trunk lol. i dont think they would fall for it. insurance companies do EVERYTHING possible to keep from paying anything. they would likely pay PCGS or NGC to look over the pictures and get thier opinion IMO(being the top services), then again we all know what Google + SGS returns. im guessing just the original purchase prices would be returned.
Ok, were back to the argument that Coin Grading is an opinion. However, the collector's argument can be made that SGS has graded thousands of coins so the coins should be graded closely. The further argument is that who is the appraiser and what is his/her expertise on grading coins? What makes the insurance appraiser's opinion gospel? I know let's send in the SGS grader for their expert opinion and appraisal. Has anyone here had their collections insured? Was the slabbed graded value knocked down for not being graded by one of the top tier grading companies? I can understand the appraiser giving lower value for unslabbed and graded coins but... I wonder how this would fair out in court? A battle for insuring a collection verses the insurance company's appraisers and the TPG Company’s so called expert opinion. After all grading is a subjective opinion. Looking at the coins I've seen so far I seriously doubt SGS even looking at their graded coins through any maginifyer to expertly examine and grade the coins properly. They just give them the old eyeball test. Or if it comes directly from the mint it MUST be PR70 or MS70 and just slab the darn things.
