I have noticed some auction houses on proxibid have many graded coins at ms63 and 64, but all their non graded coins are in their oppinion ms65, ms66, and alot of dmpl. I think im going to make a rule to avoid these auction houses because it seems unlikey that they have all these ungraded coins in such high grades.
I have found that if you want a coin in a certain grade and it costs over about $200.00 get it alrady graded not raw and try to get a grading firm to agree with a sellers claim of grade. PCGS alone has graded over 20,000,000 coins already.
I suppose it depends on what you are calling "auction houses". To me companies like Heritage, Teletrade, Stacks, Goldberg, Steinberg, Bowers and Marena - these are auction houses. Are these the types of companies you are talking about ? If not, then I would not call them auction houses. It seems to me that your real question is if you can trust the grade assigned to raw coins by sellers. And the answer to that question depends entirely on who it is that is assigning that grade. Yes, you can trust some of them. But there are far, far more that you cannot trust. So unless you know the reputation and respect that is afforded each specific seller, or - you have the ability to accurately grade coins yourself (in hand, not based on pictures). Then you should never buy raw coins. You should only buy coins that have been slabbed and graded by NGC or PCGS and nobody else.
