Recently had a French 100-franc pattern coin, designed by Bazor, graded at PCGS under gold shield service, which includes photos. The obverse has a portrait of Marianne, the French Miss Liberty. Just received the photos, and there is what appears to be a hair extending from Marianne’s cheek to her neck. It is not on the coin or slab. Might be from a brush used on the slab or camera lens. So, what to do? I can remove the hair with postprocessing, which takes a bit of work. Most folks would not be able to tell it was done although an expert could. Before and after pics of one of the images are below. Or I could take it to a big show, and they could probably photograph it on site. Or least desirable, ship it back to them. I’ll probably just take the lazy route and be satisfied with my pixel tinkering. Cal
PCGS usually takes multiple photos of each coin. You should contact them and request the others if they have them.
Holy cow, I'd definitely follow Evan's advice above, but that's pretty sad - and I apologize that it had me chuckling a bit. Is marijuana legal in wherever PCGS is doing their photographs, because if it is, that's great...
I have all available. All have the hair. I think they usually just take one photo of each side. Then the round images are digitally put in different backgrounds. Cal
If that is their Gold Shield Service…then I will take a hard pass. You did not get your moneys-worth.
Agreed. You deserve a free reholder and new photos. That is unacceptable. Just submit for Gold Shield reholder and the photos should be included. But get in touch with Customer service first. Maybe they’ll send you a link to print a FedEx label so you won’t be charged for the shipping on the outgoing return journey, either. If PCGS does the right thing, this issue should be fixed at no cost to you except the time and hassle involved. I’ve not experienced this with PCGS, but I recently had an NGC Ancients submission in which all coins were supposed to get Photovision imaging, but did not. I contacted their Customer Service, got agreement that they’d fix it, shipped the coins back to NGC with their free FedEx label, and waited while the issue was corrected. And it was, without further cost to me. There was just the added time involved. The TPGs are all too human. They do screw up on occasion. But if you speak up in a firm, yet polite and civil manner, I think they’ll resolve this for you. Let us know how it goes.
There is no need for a reholder. The hair is not currently present in or on the holder. It was just there during the photography. I may email them about it so they might improve their techniques and quality control. But it actually takes me less time to remove the hair digitally (have already done it on 1 of the 3 photos as seen in my OP) than it would to deal with PCGS. And they might not reimburse me for cost of shipping the coin back for another photo-shoot. Cal
Neat coin. Is it made of brass ? There are non-"essai" gold 100-Franc pieces of the same design from 1929-1936. They are one of my favorite foreign gold coin designs, partly due to the aeronautical style of the headgear. Most everything Lucien Bazor sculpted was art-deco in style and I have a small collection of various things that he sculpted.
Hi Dan. It’s a gold piefort pattern (Gadoury 1148, GEM-288.5, KM-P300, Maz-2531B, PCGS 392919). Incredibly, it’s been graded MS61, PF61 and SP61. Let me explain. NGC considers these coins to have a circulation strike. PCGS considers them to have a special strike. The coin was graded first by NGC, and they accidentally put PF61 on the label instead of MS61. It was listed as MS61 on their website. Then it went to PCGS and received a grade of SP61. I’ve always liked Lucien Bazor’s art-deco designs. Cal
What is the date (on the other side, I presume) ? Is the design on the other side the same as the issued coins ?
These are very pricey little baubles. Impressive. Quite the epitome of the Art Deco style of the era.