PCGS Statehood Quarters

I just purchased a few SILVER statehood quarters PR69DCAM on ebay for about $11.00 each with $1 shipping. My question is: Doesn't it cost the seller $14 for each coin to be graded from PCGS? HOw is he making any money? Is the price I paid good? I think it is.

 

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That's a good question.


I bought a Massachusetts Silver proof coin for about $7.00 plus shipping a while back. I was kinda wondering the exact same thing. How would the seller make money on that?

My coin was also graded PR69DCAM by PCGS

 

Can you say "volume discount"?

You certainly don't think the TV hucksters pay the same slabbing fees that you do, or I would if I submitted coins for grading.

 

A seller can afford to break even or maybe take a small loss on 69 coins, and will more than make it up with the money the coins that come back graded 70 will bring.

 

Yeah, they probably had a bunch come back 70's and sold them for a huge profit. Now they are just trying to get rid of the 69's at a minimal loss.

 

Some of these are very common in PR-69 and may not get the demand
necessary to make the cost of slabbing recoverable. Others are less
available in very high grade and could easily increase substantially with
a little increase in demand.

Look at as many raw coins as you can and try to determine which are
which.

 

The odds of getting a pr70 by submitting seem to be around 1 out of 20, so say someone submits 100 quarters at $8 per coins [you can specify minimum grade and probably 6 come back ungraded. So you have say 94 at $8 equals $752 dollars grading costs.

Out of the hundred 5 should come back pr70. Those five are probably worth around $1500. So you subtract out the grading costs, you have $748. Then you have to subtract the costs of the 20 coin sets, say about $520 and you still have a profit of $228, and that is only on the sale of five coins.

Next you sell off the other 89 coins at $12 each for $1068, add the other $228 and you made $1296 total.

 

So you're saying they are only grading 2.5% of the silver quarters submitted as pr69 or pr70? I don't think so.

 

No, all he is saying is that a 70 is way harder to get than 1 in 20 and that 69's are more common. I think he is trying to say that out of the hundred possibly 1 might be a 70 but there is still a good chance for multiple 69's.

 

Well, I disagree with the above statement in context of Silver Proof State Quarters. The ratio may be true for other US coins, but for Silver Proof State Quarters, my personal experience tells me a different story.

So; here lives a small time dealer who works for a big numismatic firm. On a weekly basis, this dealer receives couple of hundreds of those silver proof sets from his firm and his job is to break those sets and prepare them for sending to PCGS for grading. Now, while opening those sets, this person realizes that many of them doesn't qualify for even 68-69 grade. So, he puts them in 2X2 flips and sells them via a bid-board on a local coin shop for $2 each (just for melt). In last one year, I have purchased more then 500 silver proof state quarters on this bid-board. (Except the one dated 1999 which he sells for somewhere between $20-$30)

Now this big numismatic firm only cares for PF70 coins and sells remaining PF69 and PF68 coins to the same dealer for $8 a piece. And this dealer list those "under graded" coins for $12 on same bid-board.

So, couple of weeks back when I asked this dealer as how many PF70 DCAM coins they receive back. His answer was "sometime 4-5 per 100 submitted, and sometime none. But then the firm owner makes a call to his connections in PCGS and magically in next week's submission, the count of PF70 graded coins is increased to makeup for previous week's loss.".

So, it's clear that they make money on PF70 graded coins and don't care for the rest. And the people who are buying these PF70 coins are paying for their coins as well as for rest of the collectors too.

Well, I am happy with my un-graded state quarters and they look nice in this Dansco album.

Regards
Ballabh Garg

 

That part is so silly that it's not funny----we have a worker at PCGS here on this forum and he could tell you that none of the graders know who sends in what coin---all they see is the coin. Now I can see that the graders may know who sends in a coin if its such a coin as the 1913 V nickels but state quarters isn't somethign that is going to stand out.
Your dealer is feeding you a line.

Speedy

 

It's tough to digest. Isn't it. And why do you think it should be funny when I was not telling a joke!

Do you expect a PCGS worker to tell you the truth as how they receive the coins and grade? I am sure, everybody in PCGS will read the same automated message - "none of the grader knows who send in what coin..."

So in last few years, one specific day of the week if a dealer drives 12 miles west and drops few hundred silver state quarters at PCGS front desk, don't you think the graders have an idea from where these coins are coming? (just in case if it wasn't explicitly communicated to them)

May be he is feeding a line and I care less. But the fact is that I have bought hundreds of silver state quarters from him well below issue price from US mint and just about at melt. Any explanation you can find as how a dealer can survive selling thousands of coins well below his cost?

Regards
Ballabh Garg

 

Yes---Zane is not a liar--

Since you can't drop off coins at PCGS then this problem is by-passed---
And also---the graders don't sit at the front desk to grade coins...

Who says its below his cost???....proof sets don't cost that much---and everyone knows that when you send in lots of coins sometimes you get some $$ off....so maybe he is making a proffit....

Speedy

 

[q]So, couple of weeks back when I asked this dealer as how many PF70 DCAM coins they receive back. His answer was "sometime 4-5 per 100 submitted, and sometime none. But then the firm owner makes a call to his connections in PCGS and magically in next week's submission, the count of PF70 graded coins is increased to makeup for previous week's loss.".[/q]

Usually dealers pre-screen the coins they submit. If too many coins don't
make the minimum grade level specified then they'll have to pat a substantially
higher grading fee.

 

surprised

After reading this thread, it got my curiosity up. I checked the population report at NGC and was a little suprised, especially the 2006 state quarters. I figured that proof 69 would account for the bulk of the submissions, but I was wrong. The silver Quarters had a higher mix of p70,s than clad, but I was surprised to see that 70,s and 69,s weren't that far apart. In some cases There were more 70,s than 69,s. For older state quarters it was about 60% proof 69 and 40% proof 70.
On a side note I was surprised by some of the lower graded coins. there was at least 1 proof 61 and a few proof 63,s. They were either just in the set with some good ones or knowbody bothered to look at them.
How bad would a proof 61 quarter look?:thumb:

 

70

I looked back a little further an say the early state Quarters had many fewer 70,s than 69,s. A lot more like I would expect.

 

Of course it is wise to cherrypick the coins before submitting, it saves money and grief that way. But NGC is giving a larger percentage of 70's than PCGS does.