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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 3030282, member: 112&quot;]And that&#039;s the thing right there isn&#039;t it ? The only reason it matters or makes a difference is because you are submitting a raw or cracked out coin - that you paid for - and you want to be able to get as much money out of it as you can. </p><p><br /></p><p>Well, I get that, and if you&#039;re in the business of selling coins I can&#039;t fault you for it either because that is the business of business - to make money.</p><p><br /></p><p>But ask yourself a question, why is it that it is possible to do this ? Why is it that the number on the slab makes a difference ? </p><p><br /></p><p>The answer&#039;s quite simple really, it&#039;s because the people who are buying those coins haven&#039;t got a clue about what they are doing. They don&#039;t know anything about coins. The one and only thing they care about is the number on the slab. </p><p><br /></p><p>There&#039;s probably a whole lot of people here who can&#039;t even remember when the TPGs refused, flat out refused and swore up and down, in writing, on everything holy that they would never, ever, put a problem coin in a slab - period ! And they did this for over 20 years.</p><p><br /></p><p>Do you know why that was the case, do you know why they refused to slab problem coins ? The answer is described in what I have written and quoted above. It is because they knew that people who don&#039;t know anything would still trust the slab and that what we have today would be the result ! People paying money, way more money than the coin is actually worth, for problem coins simply because they are encased in a piece of plastic.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ya see, back when the TPGs first started they became successful for one reason, because their opinions mattered. They had rules, they had high and strict grading standards, standards that meant something, standards that people could depend on. </p><p><br /></p><p>For decades prior to that it was the norm for coins to be graded all over the map, every different dealer and collector had different standards and nobody, absolutely nobody, could trust or have any confidence in the grade the seller assigned to a coin. People who actually knew coins, the best minds and best numismatist in the hobby knew for an absolute fact that coins were being grossly over-graded - all the time. And they were fed up with it - everybody in the hobby was ! So they all (including the very people who would later start the TPGs) got together, sat down and said, OK let&#039;s put an end to this nonsense ! And what they came up with was the 1986 ANA grading standards. And then a few of those very people who wrote those grading standards started PCGS. Not even a year later, there were disagreements among themselves about how things should be done, about how coins should be graded. And so some split off and started NGC. </p><p><br /></p><p>Now ANACS had existed for quite a few years before this but they were not really accepted and used industry wide. There were some problems with their method like it was too easy to swap coins out because tamper proof slabs didn&#039;t exist at the time. Some people used them but not enough to really matter. And it wasn&#039;t until PCGS and NGC came along that a sea change occurred. Once they came along everything changed. And like I said, that sea change was possible because their opinions mattered, and they mattered because they were consistent in what they did - they did not break their own rules, they did no violate their own standards. And people came to depend on this - they trusted them. And best of all, the trust was deserved, earned !</p><p><br /></p><p>But then, everything changed. Mike, (Insider) knows all of this, he lived through it, was a part of all of it, going clear back to the beginning of ANACS. Long before PCGS and NGC even existed. I lived through it too, but I was in no way a part of it, I was merely an observer. A few here on this forum were as well, and some may well remember things differently. But what I&#039;ve related is what happened. </p><p><br /></p><p>The TPGs threw all their rules and standards out the window. Things they said they would never do, they did. Standards they said they would never change, they did. They started giving people what they wanted, instead of true and honest grades based on long established and accepted standards. And they got away with with it for one reason, well 2 reasons really. It was because of the trust that had been so hard earned over many years, and because they were giving people what they wanted - no matter what they wanted !</p><p><br /></p><p>And today, we are stuck with the mess we have because we, people, are our own worst enemies. We&#039;re pretty much right back to where we started where coins are routinely grossly over-graded. And it&#039;s even worse than it ever was because now they put problem coins in slabs to. In today&#039;s world the TPGs are not even a shadow of what they once were ![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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