NGC - New Receiving Process Adds DAYS to Turnaround Time

Wait. So now you’re telling me my coins will be coming back with poison ivy? Or just the Zincolns?

 

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Every details grade is like getting a call they’ve been suspended. You still love them but you’re so dissappoibted in them.

 

Don’t forget the Zombies Kurt you’ll catch them at camp also.
Reed, Sparkles and the Zombies.

 

I never sent my kid to camp without massive weaponry. "Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority" is a real thing.

 

Yup my Son had 4 years of training and a black belt he took to camp. Like me he only used his skills to help the underdogs but no one messed with him, EVER.
Reed, Sparkles and the Zombies.

 

Fine but during times of being very busy that means they could still be sitting around for a long time before they even START moving through the system. And it still won't get the coins back any faster. I still think people will end up being more unhappy with the new system.

 

My initial point was that one of the bottlenecks is the transition period from when the coins get sent to the graders for grading. It is in my opinion that adding graders will relieve some of the congestion going through this bottleneck.

Others have pointed out that at the time and during the receiving process, there may be a huge delay due to the sheer number of submissions. In other words, there's a huge logistical "mess" on the submissions receiving end. If coins are going to be sitting around for a long time waiting to be entered into the system, then it suggests that there needs to be more staff in the receiving department, part time or otherwise, during busy periods.

I'm not advocating the new system - hence this thread. I think it's a staffing and cost-cutting issue, as opposed to a process efficiency issue. That said, my thoughts are merely speculative and NGC's original receiving process may really have been shoddy all along.

 

All this is the INEVITABLE result of all this asinine "Early Releases" and "First Strike" garbage that has infected this hobby. Every time there's a new product from the Mint, the wholesaler modern dealers clog up the system. It's not really a healthy thing.

 

PCGS has horrible rep right now. I sent a Email to them on the 8th and its the 15th and still no reply...

 

Here's the real problem, if the system moves to fast there's no incentive for people to upgrade service levels just based off speed. It's not really in their best interest to have the staff for things to blow through. As it stands now it doesn't matter as much how fast things get entered in, the output is sole determined on how quickly the graded material can be slabbed. The back-end has a pretty fixed rate unless they add machines there which are not cheap at all so it doesn't make much financial sense to spend more on staff just to have things sit at the back end instead of the front end

Not really. Those go through the bulk departments which are almost certainly a separate track.

Besides without those the classic grading would be significantly more expensive.

 

PCGS has always had a bad reputation for replying to emails. If you really want an answer you are much more likely to get one by calling them.

Cheaper than the salary for added personnel. Of course you are also going to have to have a person to run the machine as well, but that is not highly skilled labor. . But you only have to pay for the machine once and it will last for years. I don't see adding machines as being much of a bottleneck. The real bottleneck are the graders. That IS highly skilled labor and it isn't like there is a large pool of unemployed world class graders.

 

I am at 34 business days and counting for my 9 coin World submission (invoice date December 28th.) Turnaround time was 21 days when I sent them, now it's 35 days on the website. Called them last week (when they'd rolled right by the 21 day period) and was told it was essentially 40 working days. Yikes!

Maybe I'll get them back by 2019.

 

I just got an economy order of classics back a couple weeks ago. They kept to the timeline. I was able to track each stage online, and by far the longest was “scheduled for grading”. That tells me that the grading room is their constraint, which makes sense considering that graders are the hardest to find skill set compared to packers, shippers, etc.

It may be different for moderns, as it’s likely easier to find people to grade widgets.

 

World coin grading is probably an even harder skill set to find, which would explain why you are still waiting. I mailed my coins right before New Years, probably a few days later than you mailed yours.

 

Not necessarily. The flow through the grading room could be controlled by the half end output of the slab room. Workload of the next station impacts the output at every station besides shipping. Shipping is the only one that can pump them out as fast as possible with no impact on anyone else.

Graders are certainly the hardest to replace and hire but not necessarily the slowest part. You’re also forgetting one hugely important thing too. You send an economy order. Every express and regular jumps yours until towards the end of the wait period. You can’t compare grading speed with a tier that literally just sits there for weeks because the more expensive ones go first

 

Good points. However, I very much doubt that they have their process set up to let graders making 6 figures sit around waiting for the slab machine backlog to clear. According to the tracking on the NGC website, grading and slabbing are considered a single operation, and my order cleared that phase in a few days. If coins were piling up at the slab machine after grading then I would think that my order would have spent more time there.

I completely agree with your statements about the economy tier. If they made their process so fast that everyone’s orders cleared quickly, they would be leaving a lot of money on the table because then people would just switch to the cheaper tiers. So they have an interest in keeping it slow.

My last job was in a large machine shop that practiced constraint management so this is an interesting topic for me.

 

I would say that we should send our submissions by working around the new coin release dates by the various Mints, but it seems that there's a coin being released nearly ever week of the year. Yet, NGC seems to be slower or longer with its turnaround time more-or-less at specific times of the year. I'm not sure what all of these dates are; but, I believe that the holidays are one point in time to avoid submitting coins if you want NGC to be running on a 21-day economy tier schedule.