Neat Grading Company Comparison!

I borrowed this from another forum. I hope the author will not mind but he spent good money to compare apples to apples. Click on the link, the same coin in 5 different holders. This person certainly has a wonderful idea that would benefit the collecting community.
http://www.flaminio.com/temp/wash.htm

Some newbie had bought into the PNG surveys and made the following statement:
That is exactly what the PNG has done - they have also published a couple of TPG reviews that are worth a look...
This was his answer:
Not exactly what the PNG survey is. That's just the opinions of a bunch of dealers, with expected results.

A real test would be to take 30 or so sample coins and send them around anonymously to the various services, and see what comes back.
I did this with one coin a few years back. I don't have the resources to do a proper test, but if someone like the PNG or ANA would step up and do it, it'd be very beneficial to the community.

 

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Thanks for posting this, John! I hope it inspires some people to do similar tests.

 

Awesome!

 

I was thinking the same thing. :kewl:

 

I think it is the same coin in all 5 slabs. Note the spot on Washington's left hip. Differences in the way light reflects off the slabs might have made it look like another coin.

 

Same coin, different lighting.

Very interesting, but not that surprising.

 

It is the same coin. I had NCS scrub it first before putting it in the NGC slab.

 

Good test.
Worth the effort.

 

I don't know if you were being serious or not. If you really did have NCS conserve it before it went into the NGC slab, then that one doesn't count in my opinion...and I'm not just saying that because I like NGC.

Flaminio, welcome to Coin Talk by the way! :hail:

In my opinion, this kind of comparison is the exact way that things should be done. Unfortunately, it is prohibitively expensive for an individual to do with a good survey of various coins. This kind of experiment would definitely benifit from having an organization's or publication's backing.

Keep up the good work!

 

Fair enough. I was kinda curious to see what the NCS effect was. This was a few years back, shortly after NCS started their service.

FWIW, I think ANACS got it right. I think PCGS downgraded it too much for the spots, and NGC was too loose with it, despite the NCS washdown. The biggest shocker was ICG -- this was at the time that they were getting roundly chastised for giving away too many 69s and 70s. To see a modcomm in a ICG 66 holder was a bit of a curiousity.

I keep hoping some community will pick it up. It's too expensive for an individual to do it all, but if everyone in a community, say CoinTalk, did one coin apiece, it'd make for a fairly representative and interesting sample.

 

I guess I'm getting too old but I'm somewhat confused. NCS gave this coin a wash / scrub or something , then sends it to NGC for grading. What exactly is a wash / scrub and what makes this different from a dipping or something else. I look at this coin and I'll bet almost everybody on this forum has a coin or 2 that has this type of spotting and would love to know how to get rid of them without them being considered cleaned by a TPG.

 

Firstly, when I say "scrub", I'm using the term colloquially. I have no idea what NCS's processes are for conserving a coin, and as far as I know, those processes are a trade secret anyway. It is a different process than what is traditionally considered dipping, but I'm sure some chemical agents are nonetheless involved.

You can check out their website for more details, but basically if you have a coin that's ugly in some regard, they can do their best to conserve it back to health, and then if the coin passes muster as a slabbable coin, they can walk it across the hall to NGC for holdering (NCS and NGC are divisions of the same parent company).

However, if the coin would still be bodybagged, they can put it in an NCS holder with the problems noted and a details grade assigned, similar to the way ANACS does it these days (except ANACS won't try to conserve it).

Check out NCS's before and after gallery for examples of their conservation experience. Do note that this procedure is somewhat controversial, and many feel that the "after" coins are no longer original, and thus on the same level as a traditionally "cleaned" coin.

 

Very interesting, thanks for sharing, and Bob (Flaminio), thanks for doing this.

I can't help but wonder if some "other" grading services might go for the MS99 :goofer:

 

I've thought about such a test and what the requirements would be from time to time. I think a minimum acceptable test could be done for about $100,000. I envision using about 50 coins in a variety of conditions, both circulated and MS. They would be submitted to the top 7 companies in small groups of five to ten coins each, and every coin would be submitted to each firm ten times. The multiple submissions to each firm is to rate consistantcy. (Sending in a coin and getting a good grade is meaningles if you find that if you send it in ten times and you get six different grades. I would not rate a firm consistant if they don't assign the same grade at least 7 times out of ten.)

You do not send the same coins into each firm in the same group each time. The idea is to make sure that they don't start to recognize the same group of coins coming in repeatedly. You also have the coins submitted under different names and adresses.

Each time a coin comes back it is photographed and entered into a database to track the gradings. The coins are then cracked out, re grouped and sent out again.

So we are talking 50 coins times 7 services times 10 submissions each for a total of 3,500 submissions. I'm assuming an average cost of $20 per coin per submission for a cost of $70,000. The other $30,000 pays for the postage and insurance both ways for all the submissions. There may be some money left over.

Another interesting addition that could be do as well is to do an extra three rounds of submissions but instead of using unknown people have those sent in under the name of a major market maker to see if that has any effect on the average grade assigned. This would require about another 1050 submissions at a cost of $20K. And you have the problem of how to get the market maker to agree and not have the information get out? Possibly give him the submissions already sealed and ready to go, they just need his mailing labels. But you would probably still have to tellhim what you are doing and that runs the risk of a leak.

The whole program could probably be done for around $110K. And as I said this is a MINIMUM acceptable test size. Preferably would be one about twice that size. I would think that it would take possibly three years to complete the test because it takes so long to get submission resultes back. Unfortuantely that enters another variable into the mix. Are they grading the same at the end of the third years as they were at the beginning? The longer the test runs the bigger that question becomes.

 

Along these lines does anyone know how much money The ANA has left over from their ACG legal fund? Maybe they have the cash on hand and this would be a good way to spend it on behalf of the coin community.

 

Now this is a great post!!

It just goes to show that this type of servce is so subjective it's almost a roll of the dice. Then on the other hand if you had a few experts (not from a service) they would probably have different opinions on the same coin as well, I guess.

This is why I'll just keep my coins raw and one day be proficent enough to grade my own coins with a certain amount of accuracy.

 

Do you suppose this means, even we as members of The ANA, will not ever know how much or what happened to that money. ACG stated the settlement had no financial impact on The ANA.

 

The practical implications of this sort of test for me is the realization that some of the very large price differences between grades such as MS64 and MS65 [choose any two] are irrational. One of the unintended negative consequences of TPGs may be to make collectors overconfident and/or complacent and to be more willing to overpay for higher grades.