Same coin, $17,000 difference in holders

I think you mean 2 instead of 20.

That would make sense

 

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My grade would have been AU details.

 

Yes, saw that when I popped back into the thread, got it corrected.

 

The next logical step in this coins journey to squeeze out more money is a CAC bean.

 

Looks like a HUGE black eye for the PCGS.

 

Say what???

 

That cheap insult to Mark Borckardt demands an apology. He is as honest as he is respected in the community.

 

As other s have stated, it is the cataloger's opinion of the grade based on his understanding of EAC standards, which have more recently been set forth in print in the Grading Guide For Early American Copper Coins. The book, by the way, received the Numismatic Literary Guild's Book of the Year Award in 2015.

Full disclosure: I am one of the authors.

 

Both coins look like twins but the reverse could tell the real story. My opinion

 

You guys who know graders and folks at the TPGs...what do THEY SAY when you show them something like this ?

Do they a acknowledge it's a problem ? Or they just don't care ? Or do they say 'mistakes happen' ?

 

For those who think pre-TPG days were the good ole days ... nope ... selective memory or good luck. I started with US coins in the early 1980's. As soon as I sold a few, I was done with US coins. Virtually every coin that had been bought from a dealer ... and I bought from many dealers, local and national ... was considered lower grade on selling. It was the beginning of TPGs when I quit. The few PCGS and NGC coins I bought went up nicely in value.

So I collected ancients for a while, then for financial reasons gave up the hobby altogether. Started again with US coins in the 2010's, and would not have done so without TPGs.

I do believe there has been some gradeflation with TPGs since the early days, but not by much. And some of this is inevitable grade-ratcheting because graded coins can be submitted for re-grading with no risk of them going down in grade.

With ten's of millions of coins graded, there will be errors. I've seen slabs with the wrong denomination on them. Wrong grade? Well, could have been a labeling error or coincidence of temporary neuron misfiring of graders. Pointing out errors is fun and interesting, but what really counts is the error rate. I don't know that a large scale study of this has been done and made public.

The fact that there are demonstrable errors is compounded by the subjectivity of grading. Add the two together and, yeah, there will be slabs where the coin and label seem well out of whack. Again though, what's the rate on this? What percentage of graded coins fall in this territory? It's pretty low in my (very subjective) experience.

We can all find reasons to criticize the major TPGs. I do it on occasion ... I could tell you about my late uncle's Morgan dollar that had been in a paper wrapper for 50 years and came back with an AT label ... so it was dipped by an expert and came back as ... not interested? OK. A lot of this though is bringing our own erroneously perceived objectivity to an activity that is inherently subjective.

Keep on posting grading and labeling errors ... fun to see and read, and may help keep TPGs on their toes. But posts of this type are too few and too subjective to prove a lot about TPGs other than they aren't perfect.

Cal

 

They are the exact same coin

 

My criticism is the market more than PCGS. It’s really sad that the only difference between the two sales was the holder, which alone drove the $15000 price hike. Both times, the grade, however incorrect, was treated as an absolute fact. This blind trust in the holder hurt both the original consignor and the buyer.

There are countless examples of this, where a 1-2 point bump in grade given causes the coin to sell for substantially more even though the coin has not changed at all!!!! The blind trust in the holders will be the downfall of the hobby when more and more fake slabs start seeping in.

We have transitioned from “How much is the coin worth?” to “How much is the slab worth?” Modern coin collecting has become a numbers game, nothing more. That really saddens me.

 

Which is one of many reasons why this forum is so invaluable. The forum provides the more educated, informed and experienced members a chance to help out those of us farther down the learning curve. It also helps to reinforce the basic philosophies of "Buy the coin, not the slab" and "Buy the book before the coin".

My heartfelt gratitude to all those who help out us tyros.

 

Three most important things in determining market value of US coin within type, year and mint.

slab grade, slab grade, slab grade

Cal

 

It's also great that this forum is not "owned" by the grading company. If you post too many, sometimes any, of their mistakes and you will get the boot.

 

I think embedded wireless responders in slabs will pretty much defeat slab counterfeiting. I won't say it's absolutely true. But if done properly, it's as close to foolproof as technologically possible. May be financially impractical for coins worth under a few hundred dollars. Grading services have taken the first baby steps in doing this ... should have done it years ago.

In addition to fighting counterfeiting, it will fight theft, improve recovery of lost coins, and greatly facilitate inventorying.

It will be a great income generator for TPGs. Many valuable coins will be submitted for reholdering in technoslabs.

Cal

 

It demands no such thing. What it demands is investigating. I don't know Mr. Borckardt, or anything about him. As an observer stumbling upon this thread, my question is "how?". How did his opinion of this coin change so much? Was he paid? Was somebody at pcgs paid, and their grade influenced his opinion, him having forgotten that he'd rendered an opinion earlier?

 

In Borchardt's defense, he was caught between the rock and the hard place. The first time around, he called the coin an EAC Fine-15. I would have called it an EAC VF-20, but that's neither here nor there.

Now it's in an AU-58 holder. If he still calls it Fine-15, he's got a consignor mad at him. If he grades it a lot higher, he's got you guys mad at him. The only thing he might have done was to take the 5th.

 

I'd drink the 5th but that's me!