I have a few coins I think are worth having graded and slabbed by a third party grader. Its somewhat embarrassing, but I don't know how to do so. There are a couple of local coin dealers near me, but neither has impressed me with their ethics, and I want to avoid all that. Please help, and any advice on this is appreciated.
NGC offers a few levels of membership for submitting coins. The cheapest would be to join the ANA which entitles you to submit to NGC. The attached link provides a description of the benefits of each membership level. http://www.ngccoin.com/memberportal/login.aspx Chris
Also check NGC's website. They are present at many larger shows and will hand walk you through the process. ANACS too if that will float your boat...
Joining the ANA has some benefits you should weigh versus the cost and it gives you the ability to submit to NGC (you still need to submit an application to NGC for an ANA submitter account). You'd have to pay for your NGC submissions on top of the ANA membership doing it that way. If you don't care about joining the ANA you can just join NGC directly and you'll get a certificate for 5 free early bird/standard world submissions. The cost to join is slightly less than the cost of the 5 submissions normally, so if you're planning on submitting at least 5 coins, this could be the most economical way to do it. Keep in mind that shipping/insurance makes it cost effective to send multiple coins together. Once you join, NGC sends you a packet in the mail with detailed instructions on how to package and ship the coins. ANACS frequently has representatives at local coin shows and you can submit coins through them as well and save on shipping.
If you mean that, any advice, my advice is, don't do it. Understand, however, I'm a bit of an odd old bone. That is to say, I take my coins out of plastic, I don't put them in it.
When you say a few, how many exactly do you have? The minimum submission is 5 coins, so if you have less than that you should probably not join NGC or PCGS. Your best bet is to make friends with someone on this forum who will let you piggyback your coins in one of their submissions.
I used to be a member of both PCGS and NGC. Since deciding that I prefer NGC slightly to PCGS, as I feel they do a better job with toned Silver coins, I am now only a NGC premium member. It is worth it, and entitles one to submissions, and access to all of their data, that is quite informative and interesting.
I just submitted a 1883 Hawaii 25C to ANACS after looking into NGC and PCGS. I used to have a PCGS membership but the yearly fees for NGC and PCGS turned me away along with their high grading cost. You also get the registry. I looked into ANACS and saw that they had no yearly fees and the grading fee is lower. The only problem with this is when it comes time to sell your coins. PCGS usually has the highest premiums, second with NGC and lowest with ANACS. If you want to just have the coins graded to slab them, I would choose ANACS. If you want it for resell value, PCGS or NGC. ANACS you go to their website, print out the submission form and fill it out. Package it and mail the coins. PCGS/NGC you have to subscribe for membership. Then print out the form and then package the coins and mail it out. You can always wait for a coin show with Third Party Graders and get it graded in person or submit it at the table. Oh yeah to get around the price PCGS coinfact thing, use google to search for the coin you want and view it from that link. If it fails and wants you to subscribe, clear your cache/cookies in your browser and try again...
Penny wise, pound foolish. Subscribing as a member to a TPG if you intend to submit makes the most sense, if one has raw coins that will grade. ANACS isn't PCGS or NGC--I only use them for Daniel Carr tokens/fantasy coins.
