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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;josh&#039;s coins, post: 1953226, member: 51487&quot;]I&#039;m writing this article today in order to clear some things up about the NTC grading company and to evaluate whether or not it is a good idea to sign an exclusive contract with the company.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp; The common viewpoint by most when hearing about NTC is that they do over grade coins and that on occasion they will come back the same grade after they have been submitted to NGC. This viewpoint is nothing but the truth when it comes to the Old NTC.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; The new NTC was created in may of 2013 when the company and all of its supplies were bought out by an NTC employee. The new NTC has been around for a little over a year now and on their website they have claimed to make great strides in providing consistent accurate grading. Well today we are going to see just how accurate the company is.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp; At my request an NTC employee known as Liz provided me with 2 pictures of NTC Morgan Dollars. What do you think the grade is on each coin?. I will post the results later in this thread along with examples of Morgans from PCGS.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]342763[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]342764[/ATTACH]</p><p>&nbsp; Here are some states that the owner Joe LaBarbera had provided me with.</p><ul> <li>The new NTC has been certifying 4-500 coins per week</li> <li>just under 200 repeat customers</li> <li>20-30 customers submit bulk orders on a regular basis</li> <li>When crossing-over NTC coins to the new NTC it has been found that Lincoln cents generally graded 2 grades lower</li> </ul><p>The way that the new NTC handles the old NTC slabs is quite poor in my opinion. First off there is no way to check for certification on the old slabs. NTC expects you to resubmit them. If the coin downgrades you get credit towards your next submission and sometimes you will get a free submission. The certification search for new NTC slabs works basically just as PCGS or NGC the only difference is that NTC does not provide any pictures of the coins. But I have been informed that they are looking to change that in the near future.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now let&#039;s talk about the package. NTC will send you a sample package at your request. They will send you 2 coins. 1 will be graded in an NTC slab. The other is put into a generic slab. The Generic slab is for people who want their own labels. You make your labels and send them to NTC and they grade them. However they don&#039;t certify the coin nor do they put the their name on the slab. Anyways, here is some photos of the package that I received.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]342754[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]342755[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]342756[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]342757[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]342758[/ATTACH]</p><p>As you can see on the reverse of the NTC slab there is a hair inside of it right next to their sticker. I sent pictures to the owner of NTC and he told me that this does not hold up to NTC&#039;s high standards and that he was going to chew some people out. When Liz sent me pictures she had told me that the slab I received was from a lot of test slabs that were used to test the equipment. She also informed me that these slabs are being thrown out as we speak. They apologized and sent me another package which I have not yet received. But I suspect it will be here on Monday.</p><p>&nbsp; Move on to those inserts. The owner of NTC would not tell me who manufactures them as he claims it would violate confidentiality which I can agree to. He did however claim that these inserts where high quality just like the inserts NGC uses. I was not very impressed with the inserts at first because they do look like they were cheap and flimsy. So I put them to the test. The blue quarter slab you see in the pictures was bent in half about an hour before the photo was taken. In did not take me much effort to bend the insert in half. But it did take less effort to straighten the insert out again. if you had this insert in hand you would not be able to tell that I bent it in half. So I can agree that NTC has some high quality inserts.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now I will briefly go over the financial situation of NTC. The owner of NTC had told me that he can&#039;t afford to hire anymore staff to the company.When I asked him if the company was profitable on a quarterly basis he told me that he can&#039;t discuss that but he did say &quot;let me assure you we will be around for a long time&quot;. I&#039;m sure that NTC will be around for the years to come so long as they finish the projects they are currently working on. I&#039;ve been informed on NTC&#039;s next move but I do not think they want me sharing that with the public. I will just say that NTC has potential for expanding their market share and they are going to take full advantage of the opportunity.</p><p><br /></p><p>Lastly I asked him about the graders of the company and he told me that the names of his graders are confidential. But he did claim that each grader has at least 30 years experience.</p><p>NTC has offered me the following deal: I can submit 10 coins for Free but I have to pay return postage that starts at $20. They will put my coins in black inserts if I pay for them (the cost is $540 for 1500 inserts) and I can put my company name/logo on their slab.</p><p>What do you think of all of this? not just NTC but about the coins, the reputation, everything.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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