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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jaelus, post: 2905097, member: 46237&quot;]Well, what does very similar in the big picture mean exactly? They&#039;ve all been in business long enough to be reputable and they market grade coins, so no, you wouldn&#039;t expect to see <i>huge</i> differences between them. So sure I guess? But is that a meaningful observation? There are <i>observable differences</i> in how the TPGs handle things like toning, planchet defects, minor problems, how they handle grading rare issues and key dates, especially where a price jump is involved from one grade to another. These differences manifest also on a series by series basis, and can change over time. They&#039;re not going to be huge differences, but they are there. For example, historically NGC was more lenient than PCGS when it came to toning, but then a couple years ago they tightened up so as to be very similar with PCGS. This is an observation that I think few would dispute. Another example, looking through my records of world coin crossovers from PCGS to NGC over the last 5 years, I can see that 90% of the coins crossed at a grade lower (not counting +). Is a one grade difference very similar grading in the big picture that can be dismissed, or is it meaningful enough to form an opinion that PCGS generally overgrades world coins?</p><p><br /></p><p>So where do these differences come from? Well the TPGs have their own internal guidelines to follow, which may be affected by their own policies, and that affects the grades produced. They also employ different people, who will have different grading styles and specialties that affect grades over a long period of time as well. Having said that, they also use multiple graders in order to help to produce more homogeneous grades over time and balance out the impact of individual grading styles. For example, NGC uses three graders for each coin, and then a finalizer. Nevertheless, these differences exist to the point where one can look at a coin and make an educated guess as to how all three TPGs would grade it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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