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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Insider, post: 8500011, member: 24314&quot;]Cherd, posted: &quot;I was doing some research on the early history of coinage and &quot;independent&quot; origins of coin-like currency. I&#039;d never seen any Chinese spade or knife money in NGC slabs, and always just assumed that this was probably due to the odd shapes and lack of applicable holders. However, I began looking for early Indian karshapana &quot;coins&quot; and couldn&#039;t find any of those either, even though it seems that they would easily be accommodated by traditional slabs. I ended up on the NGC website looking for answers and found this in their &quot;Coins we grade&quot; section.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><font size="6"><span style="color: #ff0000">&quot;However, currently we do not grade coins from ancient India (including Kushan and its related or derivative coinages) or from any region further east.&quot;</span></font></i></b></p><p><br /></p><p>There is no explanation given for why this would be the case. I&#039;m assuming that it might be because they don&#039;t have anyone on-staff with the appropriate expertise? Or maybe because counterfeits are too prevalent?</p><p><br /></p><p>In any case, I figured I&#039;d run it past you guys out of curiosity. Thought maybe one of you might know the answer, or have additional theories.</p><p><br /></p><p>If not, then maybe I&#039;ll shoot them an email. I just don&#039;t like bothering companies with questions intended to satiate my own curiosity.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p><i><span style="color: #b300b3">Do yourself and NGC Customer Service a favor and don&#039;t bother calling.&nbsp; You already know most of the answer and they are under no obligation to say more than they </span><span style="color: #ff0000"><b><font size="6">already have. </font></b> </span></i></p><p><i><span style="color: #b300b3"><br /></span></i></p><p><i><span style="color: #b300b3">Look, in order to authenticate something you need to have knowledge about it.&nbsp; They do not.&nbsp; That is a good thing because as possibly the #1 TPGS they want to do things right?&nbsp; I&#039;ve been in this business for decades authenticating coins and tokens from ancients to moderns from around the world.&nbsp; When I joined NGC, as a &quot;jack-of-all-things numismatic (and master of nothing) they did not do ancients, errors, or tokens of any kind.&nbsp; Things the other TPGS (except PCGS) including&nbsp; ANACS, PCI, INSAB had been doing for years.&nbsp; Furthermore they did an extremely limited number of varieties.&nbsp; I was shocked!&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie57" alt=":jawdrop:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /><img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie46" alt=":facepalm:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />&nbsp; At the first coin show I attended as an NGC grader, a man asked me why we don&#039;t do tokens.&nbsp; I said I have no idea, we should do them and perhaps he should write the owner and request we do them.&nbsp; I will not tell you what happened next but you would have thought I killed someone.&nbsp; Back at the office I argued that we could not be #1 anything as things stood.&nbsp; I was told the reason for not doing certain coins was NGC would only do things the &quot;right way.&quot;&nbsp; Gradually, they hired an error collector who has become well known, started an ancient department and expanded to tokens and medals.&nbsp; Now they can lay claim to being #1. </span></i>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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