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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;calcol, post: 2496598, member: 77639&quot;]One of my peeves against both NGC and PCGS registries is that they allow obscured sets.&nbsp; These are sets that are listed and ranked, but the public can&#039;t see which coins are in the sets or the grades of the coins in the sets.&nbsp; All you know is the set exists and has a certain number of points (and therefore, a rank).&nbsp; Yeah, I know, NGC doesn&#039;t actually state the rank, it just shows the points and places it between two ranks based on the points.&nbsp; Really same thing; amounts to half-step ranking is all.&nbsp; If someone isn&#039;t willing to at least let the coins and their grades be listed, the set shouldn&#039;t be listed at all.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are a couple of reasons for my opinion.&nbsp; First, it&#039;s not very interesting to see Joe Blow&#039;s Nifty Nickels is the no. 7 ranked set and not see what&#039;s in it.&nbsp; Might be a lift to the ego of the owner of the set, but for the rest of us, either it&#039;s &quot;so what?&quot; or just plain irritating.</p><p><br /></p><p>In addition, it&#039;s often difficult for competitors whose sets are ranked just below the obscured set to know the minimum needed to upgrade or add to their set to equal or pass the obscured set.&nbsp; Sure, they can match the set just above the obscured set, but they might not need to go nearly that far to beat the obscured set.&nbsp; And sure, they can play around with numbers to see which coins to upgrade or add to advance to the rank of the obscured set.&nbsp; But with big sets, this could mean thousands of possibilities considering multiple coins might be upgraded.&nbsp; Throw in qualifiers, like PL, DMPL, RD, RB, BN, FS, FB, etc. for some sets, and the combinations could be in the millions. Throw in pricing (set points often don&#039;t relate proportionately to cost), and it gets really complicated for the collector just below the obscured set to know how to advance to its level at lowest cost.&nbsp; Whereas, if the one-down collector saw there was a missing coin in the obscured set and it&#039;s missing in his as well, it might be a simple decision. Or it might be only a minor upgrade to one or two coins that&#039;s needed.</p><p><br /></p><p>I can see some privacy and security reasons for not requiring registry participants to make public cert. numbers or pictures of their entries.&nbsp; If this information were public, persons who recognize the coins might recognize the identity of the owner and make that information available.&nbsp; For example, if a coin is bought on eBay, the seller knows quite a bit about the new owner (real name, address, etc.).&nbsp; If the seller later sees the coin in a registry, then they could leak the private info.&nbsp; However, I think the privacy and security risks are pretty minimal if only the coins and their grades are listed in the registry.&nbsp; It might be possible that a collection with a lot of &quot;top of pop&quot; coins might be recognized as belonging to a particular individual.&nbsp; But if the owner has been careful to protect their identity in other ways, such as by not exhibiting the set at shows, chances of a the set being traced personally to them are slim.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some owners of obscured sets appear to name the set after themselves using their real names, but don&#039;t allow the coins or the grades to be seen.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; I can think of a number of reasons, but most are bit far out, so it&#039;s still puzzling.</p><p><br /></p><p>I do think though that collectors who include pictures of their coins in the registry should receive a substantial reward for doing so, say a half notch increase in points for the coin.&nbsp; As it is, there is little or no reward.&nbsp; One problem is that the pictures should be of reasonable quality, and insuring this would be a headache for NGC and PCGS.</p><p><br /></p><p>Cal[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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