"Thanks but NO THANKS..."

Thanks but "No Thanks" is what I say to Third Party Grading (TPG) companies. I learned to collect coins the old fashioned way, by going thru piles of change and looking for the date/mintmark I needed for my out of date Whitman penny, nickel, or dime tri-folder. I had a plastic magnifying glass which was badly scratched in the center of the lens so I had to look thru the edges but it served it's purpose. I learned the grades associated with wear on each coin variety. Chuckle, I traded with my brother as we each had a collection and oft times he was the only playmate I had for many a day as we lived in the sticks as described by some. My father wanted us to grow up the same way he did so... Occasionally we would "Dude Trade", as we referred to it, but certain coins each of us held were central parts of our respective collections and never considered for trading. Mine was the 1887-O Morgan Dollar and his was a 1923 Peace Dollar.

I learned to make a homemade scale with pencil and string, not to check the weights of coins but to compare their weight to others. I read many a RedBook and tried to learn. Once at my father's store they actually found some counterfeit currency and turned it into the sheriff's office. He described the individual to the sheriff and they ended up busting a counterfeit ring up in Dallas. By the way, gasoline was $.35 cents a gallon then as well, LOL. The short stocky Mexican workers who came in every now and then and traded shiny silver Peso's and bronze Centavo's for nails, bridles, and other stuff. Dad would stood close to the cash register and occasionally glanced at the pistol under the counter... I remember old John Linum walking down his long hot driveway and then up Highway 7 to the store where he'd sit on the porch in the shade and watch time go by. He'd give me a Buffalo Nickel on occasion to shoo his dog back home or catch a lizard, you know -- boy stuff.

I was a purist of the hobby but yet had a deviant side. All coins were what they stated in value and it was illegal to deface them. Never-The-Less I always found it exciting to shoot a quarter or penny with my single shot .22 rifle as I was running thru a box of shorts, no bird was safe and if a squirrel appeared he was as good as in the pot...

I'm truly one who wasn't looking when the hobby passed me by. I wasn't paying attention, must have had a long 35 year blink. Simply living a life you could say (Sex , Marriage, Birth, War - Desert Shield/Storm 90/91, Fear, Hate, Homecoming, Death, Birth, Injury, Love, Compassion, etc.) Now I've found the time to reminisce. I retrieved my old collection from our attic and virtually every coin has a memory associated with it. Every coin I touch brings back memories of the wind in the pines, the taste of homemade blackberry cobbler, and the smell of wood smoke or rain. The ring of silver when you flip a coin with your thumb and when it hits on a wooden counter still is alive within my mind.

Yes, the hobby has changed, for the worse I say. You have to be on the lookout for fakes and when you find one you bought your screwed. No use carrying it to the sheriff's office, you won't get a second look. Along the way I learned there were crooks and thieves, Yes indeed, coin collecting has become dangerous and wrought with frauds. I learned to the ring of silver can be easily duplicated in China. I learned the old time coin shop was dieing. Would I ever be able to take my children into one so they could gaze with wonder at the beautiful 'cartwheels' thru glass display cases? But guess what... There are still a few breathing and opening their doors to new collectors. Sadly I tried to instill the love for the hobby with my daughters but alas with very little luck. The line of succession looks like it will be broken...

But back to coins, When David Hall wrote this famous letter and I read it albeit some time afterwareds. I was dumbfounded. Surly some could see he was leading lambs to slaughter and he was holding the knife behind his back.

"The Word is Out!!!
We've had a ten year honeymoon with the coin buying public, but we've betrayed their trust, and the word is out. The word is out in the financial planning community; in the hard money circuit; and to the coin investing public. Coin dealers are rip-off artists; the rare coin market is a trap.
For ten years, we've sold coins to the coin buying public as MS-65, only to tell them that the grading standards had changed and their coins graded MS-63 when it was time for them to sell.
For ten years, we've told them that rare coin prices have gone up and up and up and up, only to tell them that the buyers bidding those higher prices were very fussy, very selective, sight-seen buyers who bought only the coins that they liked and not the coins that the public owned.
For five years, we've supplied the telemarketers who have pounded the coin-buying public with Salomon Brothers fantasies while [selling them] viciously overgraded coins.
We are currently paying the consequences of the abuses of the past ten years. And frankly, we deserve it!"

David Hall, dealer and a principal in the Professional Coin Grading Service
[in a 1988 letter to coin dealers about past abuses and PCSGS's new standard]

It kinda reminds me of a coyote guarding the hen house. So I say NO to TPGs. The opportunity for abuse is too easy and frankly the line has been crossed on several occasions by other TPGs. I rely on my own horse sense and a good scale to filter authentic and reproduction/fake coins from my collection. If I think a coin is XF and gorgeous I don't need another telling me it's actually Net F-15 for a rim ding just to have it in a plastic holder for posterity. I want to hold it and turn it and look closely at the workmanship. It's in my collection and I'm the only grader. I don't collect for investment and I don't sell coins either.

Hopefully in 100 years a descendent of mine will still have the collection I've accumulated and have the where-with-all to keep it complete but show it to others. A true treasure chest with MY handwriting and my grades still on the 2X2 flips.

I DON'T need TPGs and hope others feel this way as well.

Bone encil:

 

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Hey Bone....good read!!!

Speedy

 

Thanks, it took me some time to think it out

B

 

Hello Bone...
Nice story and has the Earthy Crunchy feel to it. As time has passed so has the general honor of our society for the most part. There is corruption in almost every level of power in some way or another. With the powers to be there will always be a "sucker" born to fall into the traps of not so nice people. Hooray for the honest men and women in our hobby! However, certain levels of this so called hobby have turned into the investment side of finance! For what it is worth, my impression is that it is here to stay. Most of us can not afford the 10K to 200K coins that should be graded....but there are certain others that warrant slabs not so much for the name that is upon them..but for protection against scratches, nicks, and various other forms of damage. I for one have all of my gold (investment grade) certified by just the entity you mentioned..(PCGS) from my investigation they are #1 in what they do with NGC right behind them...I suppose what I am trying to say is that when you have a gold coin worth well over 1K or just below..thats not so much chump change if ya get my drift. In order to maintain a fair trade value it's condition needs to be understood. I agree with you that the TPG services are way out of line at times and take advantage of those who do not know..In a way..this is cited as commerce. Cruel but actually the way it is.
Kudo's to the old times..wish I could live them again...but progress is a machine that has no brakes!

Kind regards,
RickieB
:high5:

 

Thank you for taking the time to post this, what an enjoyable read.

I like my coins raw too, but sometimes there are coins I won't touch without the help of a trusted dealer or TPG company. I waited for over a year for a Trade dollar for my type set until my dealer got one in that was real. It's too tough to be an expert or even knowledgable in all the series.

 

Thanks Bone

Thanks For Bringing Some Of Us Back Down To Earth. The Old Way Is A Nice Way To Restart, God Bless

 

Thank you very much for your thoughts. I would love to some day be experienced enough to be so precise in personal grading. Basically just getting into the hobby and finding so many unscrupulous buck-meisters. I actually prefer TPGs. For the TPG's I trust, it's rather comforting to know there are graders with 8 hour a day/5 day a week grading experience that can "certify" my coin as authentic and of such and such a grade. I tend to trust this far more than Hermann at $IwishIhadadollarforeverypennyIhave$.com or the nice octagenarian Mr. B of NextDoorFamilyCoinShop telling me this wonderful specimen is VF20 as he adds Rat Poison instead of Skinny&Sweet to his coffee.

I really do appreciate your thoughts, I just wish I was that good..

Sorry don't really mean to be so sarcastic.. I'm just embellishing my point

 

Bone that was well written, me I have never felt the urge to buy a coin in plastic dont see the joy in it, I like to hold em to feel how real it is to sence the history behind it LOL so no slabs for me I dont even like my cards slabed

De Orc

 

I used to feel the same way...then after seeing some fakes and owning some...I decided that help was needed....also if they slab a fake...they pay for it I feel a little better knowing that my keys are in a holder where no damage will hurt them...

Speedy

 

I love raw coins but then I don't want to harm them either. I keep a morgan and a peace in my pocket so that I can resist touching the others.

 

It is precisely the cheat and counterfeiters that stopped me in the mid-eighties from collecting raw coins.
I would look at Morgan dollars being sold for better grades than I would grade them. I becames suspicous because I saw more and more coins being hyped for something, in my judgement they were not.
Turns out I was right in that assessment.
I will only purchase coins from PCGS and NGC. I Perfer NGC, In my opinion, concerning Morgans, they are the most consistent. If it were not for these two third party graders, my days of buying Morgan and Peace dollars would be over.
It is sad to know people take all kind of liberties with coins to sell them for higher value than they are worth. Artificial toning, dipping, whizzing are terms I' ve learned from this forum. This forum has been a tremendous help in educating me in this hobby.
I have been sending coins to NGC for grading and Vam attribution. Coins I purchased from mowing grass as a youth.
I've only had two that had issues. One was a 1934 Peace dollar, easy MS 64, creamy white. Ahh, my very first whizzed coin. Purchased from a respectable coin shop in Louisiana in 1973. The other was a 1900 Lafayette dollar advertised as MS 63. I have always wanted one. I paid $405.00 for this and sent it to NGC. It came back AU 58.
Buyer beware. How many times have we heard this? Where is honor anymore ? truth ?
I do miss the days of a local coin shop owner that would talk to me as a real person. I was thirteen when I started collecting. That was my education.
In 1970, as a junior in high school I took a class on grading coins. Boy, have times passed me by.
Perhaps I am a harder grader, or misguided because I see coins grading higher than I ever would give a grade to.
Do I yearn for the days you wrote about? Yes I do, unfortunately those days are like the Morgans and Peace dollars, they are of days long gone by.

 

The more things change...

Counting from Zero. If you goto rec.collecting.coins, you will see my posts from 2002-2003, signed "West of the Pecos." I was never happier than living out West and after we complete this round of college, we are returning. A few months back, my wife and I were amused to hear Lynn (Mrs. Richard) Cheney interviewed by Terrie Gross of public radio's "Fresh Air." The gulf was not just political -- though there was that -- but cultural. As an Easterner, Terrie Gross simply could not understand Lynn Cheney's Wyoming perspective on life. Most people do not understand that Wyoming made Nellie Tayloe Ross governor so they could beat Texas to the punch -- but both were behind New Mexico, which sent a woman to Congress before statehood. Out West people were always equal despite the law and back East no one could be equal without a law.

1. Look for a new thread on "Capitalism and Numismatics." Your growing up in business makes a difference. One reason that the British numismatists failed to understand the invention of coinage is that the British scholars put a layer of socialism over a layer of aristocracy without ever understanding and appreciating the merchants.

2. As for the other points ... One of the truly eye-opening experiences in my short tenure at Coin World was having immediate access to the archives. I had 40 years of Coin World to look through -- and before that Numismatic Scrapbook, and Coin Collectors Journal, all going back another generation. Nothing has changed.

2.A. Your experience has been repeated time and again.

You can find the same complaints voiced at ANA conventions in the 1920s. "The hobby is not what it used to be. Now it has changed for the worse. No one is honest any more. All anyone cares about is a quick buck." It is the same hobby that it always has been.

Back in the late 1800s, coin dealer Eduard Frossard argued in print with the auctioneer Chapman Brothers. The accusations flew back and forth.

2.B. Your complaint about the Third Party Graders is not much different than complaints 100 years ago that so-called rarities like the 1804 Dollars were swindles by numismatic insiders with friends at the Philadelphia Mint who made these and other so-called "patterns" for their social circle which then peddled them to unsuspecting collectors out in the boondocks of Ohio and Illinois as real items. Today, people drool over 1804 Dollars. Personally, I feel that the 1804 Dollars and 1913 Liberty Nickels are phony junk. Obviously, I am in the minority.

3. I have voiced the same concerns and others as well. I think that it was someone in the New Zealand Libetarian Party who coined the word "sheeple." Jeremiads and Cassandra calls always fall on deaf ears -- by definition. (You can find my post in a different thread on why I stopped collecting -- and you can read the replies I got to that.) I just get what I can from the hobby -- or anything else in life -- and give back whatever it will take of my best efforts -- and I don't make more out of it than is really there.

 

Fewer and Better

 

Mike,

While your expected response was as expected, rambling. Ranging from politics out west to the 1804 Dollar and the 1913 Nickel with your experiences at Coin World added as a dash of legitimacy. My post was directed at the (Carpet Bagger) middle men who've recently whittled a niche for themselves in a hobby which had very few middle men (Coin Dealers) to begin with. But business is business and I simply choose to not do business with them. I'm not alone in this choice either.

B

 

Honestly I agree... have always preferred raw coins. To me slabs just ruin the fun of it. I don't even buy based on anyone's opinion of the grade but merely based on my own opinion of the appearance of the coin. Sometimes I will check with a knowledgeable person on the grade just to be sure I'm getting the coin at a reasonable price, but that's about as far as I go.

 

In reality it all boils down to personal taste as I have said to me a coin in a slab looks well dead so I wont go out of my way to buy one but this is just my personal choice.

De Orc

 

The envelope, please ...

Who is "we"?

Who is "the public"?

 

"The Word is Out!!!
We've had a ten year honeymoon with the coin buying public, but we've betrayed their trust, and the word is out. The word is out in the financial planning community; in the hard money circuit; and to the coin investing public. Coin dealers are rip-off artists; the rare coin market is a trap.
For ten years, we've sold coins to the coin buying public as MS-65, only to tell them that the grading standards had changed and their coins graded MS-63 when it was time for them to sell.
For ten years, we've told them that rare coin prices have gone up and up and up and up, only to tell them that the buyers bidding those higher prices were very fussy, very selective, sight-seen buyers who bought only the coins that they liked and not the coins that the public owned.
For five years, we've supplied the telemarketers who have pounded the coin-buying public with Salomon Brothers fantasies while [selling them] viciously overgraded coins.
We are currently paying the consequences of the abuses of the past ten years. And frankly, we deserve it!"

David Hall, dealer and a principal in the Professional Coin Grading Service
[in a 1988 letter to coin dealers about past abuses and PCSGS's new standard]

The above is quoted from Bones original post, I would suggest that the 'We' he refers to are coin dealers and the 'Public' are those they sell to. Now I might well be wrong but thats how it reads to me :smile

De Orc :kewl:

 

Those are words Dave Hall (top guy at PCGS) said between the quotation marks.

Bone

 

Extremely good read Bone. I spent a whole summer out west with a .22 and a .45 pistol. had a BLAST!

we shot at quarters and cans all day, and after that at dusk, squirrels and rabbits became fair game.

Then was the dirtbikes and 4-wheelers. fun there too.

i used my uncle's metal detector and found so many old silvers.