Well, I went and did something crazy. Totally out of character for me. I joined the NGC registry. Now, if anybody has been following my posts for the past 15 months, it should be fairly obvious that I'm not a big fan of graded coins. That hasn't, and likely won't, change. And, in fact, the only coin that I have that is graded is a coin from a company that doesn't even rate onto NGC's registry! But...Odds are, I WILL end up with a graded coin or note at some point. With so many people getting their items graded, either for security reasons or just to jump on the bandwagon, eventually I am going to find something graded that I want to add to my collection. So I decided not to wait. I joined up the NGC/PMG registry today, 10/03/09. Before I visited the site, I had not even KNOWN that PMG and NGC was the same company. It really tells you how much attention I pay to that kind of stuff. I chose the NGC registry for two reasons, although one ranked well above the other. I've spent more then a year on the PCGS forums, and I know that the PCGS registry accepts PCGS coins only. The NGC registry accepts NGC, PCGS and NCS coins (though I think the latter is another branch of NGC). That was the biggest draw for me. Since I will truly be buying the coin, and not the holder, I liked that leeway. The other reason was a factor but not as large a factor. It was FREE. Free is good. I have no intention of ever paying to get any of my coins graded myself, so it would be foolish to pay for a membership with submittal fees. Likewise, the population reports mean nothing to me. They are heavily skewed by all the crackouts, but also, there are lots more coins that are not graded. So the population report doesn't really tell you how many coins are out there, which WOULD be interesting, it would just tell you how many times that specific coin (meaning date/style) has been graded, and could even including multiple points of data for the same coin. So, it's nothing to me. I am hoping not to be deleted for inactivity, LOL. If I update it, it will be rarely. Maybe I will buy the cheapest graded coin I can find at CoinFest next week just to put something in my registry In fact, I probably will do just that, provided I can find something that is cheap enough to fit my standards, and I actually need for my collection. I'm not going to buy a duplicate for the heck of it. Who knows, I have not seen top tier graded coins in person yet. I will next week at CoinFest. Maybe I will see them and fall in love, and decide, hey, this isn't so bad, and then proceed to submit all my good coins. Not likely, (I'm too cheap to pay for grading fees!) but it MAY happen. Now I just need to learn how to read a slab...from the pictures I have seen there are lots of numbers that don't seem to have anything to do with the coins...
My feeling on "registry" sets is that it's just a big wee wee contest. (the above comment is an expression of opinion by the author, and the author alone. Nothing should be implied by his comments as they are his and his alone. :smile As always, wee wee contests should not be conducted in enclosed areas...)
