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Message:: [QUOTE="gmarguli, post: 5391144, member: 246"]I can't say if it has changed, but many years ago I had a discussion with the then-President of PCGS about this. It wasn't a Q&A at a coin show where others were listening. Just him & me having lunch. He was very clear that when they buy back coins they want to keep the collectors happy. They have even over-payed to make the collector whole. Dealers are another matter as they should know the price of coins. The main reason I'm not worried about the "reasonableness" of their compensation is that the cost to them of paying a fair price is much less than the cost of their reputation. Could you imagine what it would do to their reputation if people thought they were only paying 70% of FMV? Or worse, $800 for a $20K+ coin! PCGS used to post how much they paid out each month under their guarantee. I seem to recall it was around $100K. Of that amount, they recoup a lot by reselling the now-downgraded coins. So maybe 1% of their revenue goes to buying back mistakes. You think they'd risk that other 99% to save an extra few thousand dollars a month? While I have heard the occasional stories about people getting lowball offers, I've heard way more stories of the TPG stepping up and paying fair for their mistakes. I suspect a lot (not all) of those "lowball offers" are from people who overvalue their coins.[/QUOTE]