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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 4590080, member: 66&quot;]NCI was a strange company.</p><p><br /></p><p>Steve Ivy formed Heritage in 1976, and was joined by Jim Halperin in 1982.&nbsp; In the mid 80&#039;s Jim Halperin created NCI grading service.&nbsp; Exactly when he created it is a bit open to question.&nbsp; Some references say 1986.&nbsp; Jim&#039;s book The NCI Grading Guide says it was started in 1985.&nbsp; The first NCI certificate is copyrighted and dated in 1984.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then there is the question of NCI&#039;s relationship to Heritage.&nbsp; Heritage says there is no connection between them and NCI.&nbsp; Yet NCI was formed by one of their current partners, In the mid to late 80&#039;s Heritage listed a LOT of NCI graded coins on their fixed price lists, and other than on the first grading certificate NCI&#039;s address was listed as 311 Market St. Dallas, TX.&nbsp; Which was, surprise surprise, the Heritage building.&nbsp; So was there a connection?&nbsp; Heritage says no, I suspect yes.</p><p><br /></p><p>Another question is when did the close their doors?&nbsp; On this I am unsure.&nbsp; I know they were open til at least 1990, and I know they were closed by 1992.&nbsp; Exactly when they closed down I can&#039;t say.</p><p><br /></p><p>While they were in operation they used 8 different generations of photocertificate, and one hard plastic slab.&nbsp; I know the slab was used in conjunction with generations 7 and 8, and may have been used on its own at the end of the companies run (but if it was I would expect a change in the verbiage on the back of the slab.&nbsp; You can&#039;t require the presence of the certificate to qualify for the grading guarantee if you aren&#039;t issuing certificates.</p><p><br /></p><p>Another problem is trying to determine the emission order of certificate generations 2 through 8.&nbsp; In my book I tried to order them the best I could based on the earliest and latest dates seen on the certificates.&nbsp; But ALL the date ranges overlap.&nbsp; I seems like they must have ordered certificate styles in different batches whenever they got low and then just grabbed whatever certificate was handy.&nbsp; For example most of the NCI 6 certificates are dated 1987 and 88, and the copyright is also 1987.&nbsp; But the earliest NCI 6 certificate is dated 3/5/86!&nbsp; That is before the earliest NCI 2 certificate I&#039;ve seen. I&#039;m not sure how you can issue a certificate almost a year before the copyright date on the certificate.</p><p><br /></p><p>Another odd thing.&nbsp; Although supposedly they started in 1985, and I have a certificate dated in 1984, I have never seen an NCI certificate dated in 1985.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the late 80&#039;s NCI was looked down upon among the dealers I knew and worked with.&nbsp; It was ranked below that of Accugrade. and was considered a joke.&nbsp; But after they closed their doors, for about a decade and a half the Coin Dealers Newsletter hade a table in each issue that ranked the grading services and what their coins would be &quot;worth&quot; as a percentage of the CDN prices.&nbsp; PCGS was always rated highest, but NCI was rated very high as well, often as #2!&nbsp; So there seemed to be a real disconnect between how the dealers at the shows saw NCI and how the Graysheet saw them.&nbsp; Plus the fact they were still being listed more than a decade after they closed even though you seldom saw them (They were never that common even when they were in operation) was odd.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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