Grading is BS

Graders work on 800 coins a day. Not accounting for break times, that's 100 per hour or 1 minute, 40 seconds each. I doubt anyone can keep up with that kind of work load, all day long, without making significant errors. Admittedly, they're only right 80% of the time. The claim that differences between multiple graders will average out over time is nonsense. They're still going to be 80% accurate overall. The ideal that you can resubmit a coin multiple times until it gets a grade you like is fallicious; what you wind up with is a coin that is overgraded and a future buyer will still grade the coin himself, regardless of what the holder says.

Bag marks are OK for some coins, not so for others. Wear can be overlooked on some high points, on some coins, as long as the wear spot is not discolored. Spots and fingerprints matter on some coins, no so much on others. Toning is bad for some coins but can be overlooked on others. The rarer a coin is, the more you can overlook defects that would bodybag another more common coin. Eye appeal (which is a rather vague term) can make or break a coin which is otherwise absolutely identical to another. Cleaning done decades ago can be overlooked but not on more recent coins.

The acceptance of grading only matters if you're in this for future profit. On the other hand, if you're a collector who only wants to collect nice things, then the only consideration should be how the coin looks in hand. I've seen plenty of coins graded 55 or 58 which are far more desirable than some graded 65 or 66, simply because the 50's are visually better than the 60's which may have heavy toning and subsequent loss of visual detail.

In the field of cars, I know of someone with a 1963 Pontiac "Swiss Cheese" Catalina
that's worth on the order of $750,000. It looks exactly the same as any other 1963 Pontiac Catalina worth $20,000. The former is parked in a garage and will never be driven on the street; the latter can be driven and enjoyed every day. This is how I see coins. You can go nuts seeking the perfect MS70 coin worth thousands and when you find it you put it in a vault somewhere, only to be seen on special occasions. Or you can be happy with a pretty EF or AU coin that you can keep on a shelf in your living room and enjoy every day.

 

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They're better than 80% accurate but even if we go with 80% the claim that their overall rate would be 80 is simply not true. 2 of the 3 have to be wrong on the same coin. Unless they are wrong on the exact same coins (which would never happen over a large sample size) the three person system improves accuracy over an individual.

You can submit a coin a million times and doesn't mean it will ever upgrade. A borderline could go either way coin will probably upgrade at some point, but anyone who thinks that getting an upgrade is simply a matter of the number of tries is sadly mistaken.

Toning is only not okay when they deem it environmental damage or artificial. That is the same for every coin and every series. Only one company basically automatically details some series for being toned.

Is two coins have different levels of eye appeal they are in no way identical to each other.

 

By my math, that's 0.6 minutes per coin or 36 seconds...perhaps you meant 1 and 2/3 coins per minute.

 

Yes, I believe @davidh is in error.

A lunch period is usually factored into most work days. It can vary from 30-60 minutes. Let's assume that a 45 minute lunch is provided. Therefore, the normal work shift would provide for 7.75 productive hours.

If grading 800 coins per day is the norm, the average grader would handle 103 (rounded) coins per hour or about 1.7 coins per minute.

Chris

 

David, congrats. It took you long enough but I think you reached the first plateau in the never-ending pursuit of Truth, Justice, and the American Way of Grading Coins...

 

If it works for you, then it works. That's all that counts.

 

this math doesnt work:

 

@davidh

Your statement that "Grading is BS" is hilariously funny and has some merit. As I started through it, I spit soup all over my keyboard. Unfortunately, IMHO portions of it come off as a rant!

Perhaps, for the benefit of all of us here, you could take your contentions and enlighten all of us as it should lead to an interesting discussion rather that a lot of questions. For example:

1. On which coins don't fingerprints matter?

2. Where did you learn how many coins are graded each day?

3. On which coins don't bag marks matter?

4. What do you base your statement about cleaning on?

5. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN COLLECTING? ARE YOU A DEALER? HOW MANY MAJOR SHOWS DO YOU ATTEND A YEAR? HOW MANY COINS DO YOU SEND IN FOR GRADING A MONTH?

6. Etc. My soup is getting cold!

An answer to questions like this would go a long way to add "weight" to your post.

Thanks!

 

I liked the 85-O Morgan in '66 and I don't like most Morgans. That one does have a very strong eye appeal. IMHO Morgans are easier to grade, especially with nice strikes, than many other coins.

Where I diverge in opinion are the gold $20s, as Ron Guth notes many of them came in bags back from Europe where they spent decades. PCGS and NGC give a bit on grading because of how they were handled. I disagree with that notion, it is a fact of life with the great majority of those coins from that era that they are going to be baggy and no allowances should be made for bagginess in grading. In essence they are pushing up a grading number based on conditional factors. I myself have looked at thousands of $20 pieces and have seen the full spectrum of grades. I have seen some very nicely preserved pieces and they are quite rare. The vast majority of the $20 coins are going to have handling - and that should be a reality - not an excuse.

Oh and pawprints on coins are always a negative for me and there is no flipping way those pawprinted coins should ever get an MS grade.

 

It's an art more than a science. Human error will always be a factor until computers can do it all. I'm not a huge fan though. All it takes is one scandal or leak from the TPGs and the house of cards crumbles.

 

I agree on the " paw printed " Coins. Unless it was a mint employee that left it?

 

Then it's a mint error because it's a mint employee error.

 

I've never heard of a 45 minute lunch break in my life. 30 or 60.

 

I've heard that some lucky people reach a point in their profession when they don't have set times for lunch breaks or even working hours. When those lucky people are also doing something they love each day...sometimes they even take walks in the sunshine after their second lunch of the day.

 

Well I don't have a set time either for lunch. But it usually means I take 10 minutes. Or eat at my desk while working.

 

That's my favorite location for lunch #1.

 

Grading is an art, not a science, so there will always be inconsistencies even among TPG's. Whether or not that constitutes BS is a matter of opinion. But even if the OP is correct that the TPG grading standards are BS, what about the grading standards of individual dealers prior to the TPG's? I for one would prefer not to go back to that...

 

If you want a coin graded, just post it here. We can hit the side of the barn, during lunch.

 

Some of my favorites were throwing rocks into a bucket.

 

"I've never seen a coin that looked like this." How many times have you heard that said on these forums?

FWIW, I worked at National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD after graduating from high school in 1965 and at GEICO's home office in Chevy Chase, MD in the late 60's and early 70's. Both had 45-minute lunch breaks.

Chris