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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Dafydd, post: 26770066, member: 86815&quot;]TPG&#039;s on anything less than modern coins is hit and miss. I recently had a coin graded AU details &quot;scratched on obverse&quot; that I certainly never saw and you can only see it in certain light and angles. In the real world it would be a bag mark on a raw coin. Similarly another had a tiny nick on the flank of a horse on a crown&nbsp; sized 38 mm coin and again details &quot;scratched&quot;. It took me a while to find the blemish with a loupe. To pay the equivalent of $60 in my currency to have a coin condemned is a waste of three or four months and&nbsp; a waste of of my time and money. It&#039;s so obvious that many people collect the label and the plastic on &quot;one upmanship&quot; basis and that it is causing problems.</p><p>In contrast, I once sold a collection of 18th Century pattern shillings because of unexpected circumstances and the grades I bought at were decimated by the dealers including the outfit I bought most of them from. My choice uncirculated became extremely fine and the drop in value was huge and more than dealers legitimate mark ups. I have no issues with people making profit and if they can buy for 100 and sell for 500 because of their knowledge against my ignorance good luck to them. My issue is manipulating grades when it suits them to do so. In this scenario I believe the TPG&#039;s offer consistency but for anything earlier than say 1700 its a lotto. In all of these situations I was grading to preserve provenance and not have the coin elevated or destroyed by someones opinion. I dare say I would have been happy if the coins came back with unrealistic good grades and that has happened but not when it looks as if the grader is going out of their way to find issues.</p><p>I&#039;ll post some of my &quot;details&quot; coins when I have a chance.</p><p>I have bought some beautiful 17th Century &quot;cleaned&quot; coins at bottom basement prices because of the plastic label. What sensible person considers that a coin dug from the ground more than 400 years ago hasn&#039;t been cleaned or the latest idiocy is &quot;brushed&quot; even when it shows toning. Brushed is not a grade, simply a negative descriptor. Fortunately many of my early hammered coins are &quot;brushed&quot; as I wouldn&#039;t have bought them in the clods of dirt they came out of the ground in. You cannot put labels for modern coins on early coins and that says a lot about the TPG infatuation with their bread and butter which is modern USA issues.</p><p>There&#039;s a lot of &quot;Emperors New Cloths&quot; in this acceleration of &quot;details&quot; and new grading terms and none of it benefits the collector and I am sure is only there to abrogate the worthless warranties of the TPG companies.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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