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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cwtokenman, post: 57475, member: 2100&quot;]I understand what you are saying about them being professionals, GDJMSP, but I think you were being rather generous comparing them to that group of IMO generally more highly skilled/knowledgable professionals. I think it would be a closer comparison to compare them to another group of professional opinion givers, the weathermen. </p><p><br /></p><p>Not all pros are &quot;way better&quot; than many amateurs. My bowling average used to be in the 220&#039;s, as were quite a few other local bowlers. Yea, the pros are better, but not that much. Car mechanics? Last fall the &quot;real pros&quot; at the dealership wanted $2200 to replace the rotors on my truck (with the same type problematic garbage grade steel ones that had just warped terribly after 18,000 mi). I bought the rotors myself for $420 and had them changed in an evening. As quick? Probably not, but neither am I set up with tools and work area as they are. Worth my effort? You betcha!!! Something about getting paid by the job (or number of jobs) seems to promote finishing &quot;the job&quot; as quickly as possible rather than doing the best job possible.</p><p><br /></p><p>I mention the above as correlations to my feelings as to the tpgs quality/accuracy with (Civil War) token grading, which is pretty much all I am familiar with of their work. They do not see thousands of each of these, because they simply do not exist. The vast majority of varieties (about 80%) have pops of 20 and less, so if one gets graded, it may very well have been the first one that they have seen, especially since relatively few cwts have been graded. I feel the quality of their work with tokens is about on par with the weatherman&#039;s accuracy, maybe slightly better. On the ebay boards in the past, I have brought a number of token slab examples to the board&#039;s attention, where even the most adament slab supporters were apalled at the assigned grades, especially from their favorite grading houses. Again, my opinion does not pertain to regular coinage, as I am not involved with collecting that. But as far as cwts, judging from the few cwt slabs out there, heck, I likely own more of them than the individual graders have assigned grades to. Even if in actuality a given grader has examined a greater quantity than I, it is likely a rather marginal number. And evidently they do not have the time to scrutinize them with the love and interest that I do, examining under magnification for slight variations indicating a new variety, comparing with other tokens, noting distinctive features, etc. Perhaps you would consider me rather slow, but I often spend 15-20 minutes of inspection upon initial receipt of a CW token, admittedly very little of it relates to grading however. I guess what it boils down to, with the number of id errors I have seen, if they all too frequently can not accurately tell me what something is, how can I believe their opinion as to its condition?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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