Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Burton Strauss III, post: 2601239, member: 59677&quot;]Every couple weeks, somebody posts the same question on ICG. Personally, I suspect it&#039;s because the search function won&#039;t let you search for a three letter word.</p><p><br /></p><p>Usually the underlying question is &quot;I paid PCGS money for a coin marked MS6x, did I pay too much&quot;. If that&#039;s the question, yeah you paid too much.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The Greysheet (a dealer pricing guide) lists several older and 2nd tier slabbing companies in their price guide, for some common dates, common grades, at a hefty discount. The greysheet is the price seen market - that is a dealer has looked at the plastic and generally agrees. The Bluesheet is the price unseen market and that is only made in PCGS and NCG coins.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>ICG is generally thought of as the 4th place of the 4 grading companies that eBay allows sellers to list numeric grades from. In order of market premium they are PCGS, NGC, ANACS and finally ICG. SEGS seems to meet the published criteria of eBay (searchable registration validation and a population report), but has not been accepted into the club.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>With ALL of the TPGs, the grading standards have changed over the years. How badly and how blatantly is a matter of opinion. Originally all were ANA-compliant technical grading, they&#039;ve all come to market grading at different times. One dealer - an expert in the particular series and author of the primary guide to that series-&nbsp; has even documented this in an article he wrote about gradeflation of a specific rare key date.</p><p><br /></p><p>If standards are looser, the converse is that last decades MS62 is today&#039;s MS63 or MS64.</p><p><br /></p><p>This leads to the myth that &quot;XYZ slabs of some vintage&quot; are undergraded and will upgrade. In fact, most of the older slabs have been looked over several times and the obvious upgrades already cherry picked. The high end 62s are in 64 plastic and the low end 62s are still 62s. Maybe high end 62s now, but still 62.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>In order to roughly date the slab, the characteristics that have changed over time are looked for. The specific shell, the label style, etc. This is why you will see &quot;OGH&quot; (Old Green Holder) or &quot;Rattler&quot; or &quot;Fatty&quot; in listings.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in