NGC to photograph all certified coins to help combat countefeit slabs...

it's horrible.

 

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It was just one of several suggestions that various people made. The important thing is that the TPGs are doing something.

 

Wouldn't be any harder, and probably easier, to produce fake photocertificates than it is to create fake slabs.

Have any images or examples availableof the fake NCS slabs? I haven't seen them yet.

I would disagree when it came to the ANACS certificates, and a few of the others. The certificate was an actual high quality photograph and you could actually use a magnifying glass on them to enlarge and look for the small identifying details. You could actually do a close coparison to make sure the coin matched the photo. Yes some of the lesser services photos were pretty crummy but not all of them.

Correct, it was partially laziness on the part of the buyer, and the problem that there were no strong security measure incorporated into the certificate, just an embossed seal that often couldn't be easily read. Anyone with the ability to take photos and print his own pictures could with a litle work produce fake photocertifcates. Take a picture of your fake print up a certificate with the serial number from a real one and there you go. Surprisingly that almost never happened. Instead there was a thriving market in certificates without the coin. You would send in a coin get it certified and sell the certificate to someone who wanted one to sell his coin (possibly fake, possibly undergraded or problem). Then you would send it in again for a new certificate. Since so many collectors didn't bother to compare the coin to the certificate the scam usually worked. I remeber back in the 70's at shows dealers would often have a pile of certificates in their case and other dealers would come up and say "I'm looking for a certificate for a 14-D in Fine, do you have one?" They'd go through the stack and if he had one that looked enough like the coin the certificate would be sold. This is not hearsay, I actually observed these deals being made.

I think that may be where the NGC program will fail. They plan on imaging the coin in the slab and showing the whole slab. Will the resolution be high enough for it to be possible to zoom in close enough to see those tiny details (scratches contact marks etc) that can be used to definitively prove the coin in hand is the same one as in the image? And if so what will the files sizes be like and load times? Anything less than a highspeed broadband connection and you have to wait several minutes or longer for the image to load and the same for each time you zoom in.

 

good you are seeing the light i was a bit worried earlier