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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 1910405, member: 112&quot;]It used to be one great big exception, years ago PCGS slabs brought higher prices in almost every case. But it was never because they had tougher grading standards, it was because they were the first, because in the very year they opened for business the ANA came out with an actual tougher set of grading standards - MS65s became MS63s literally overnight - and David Hall claimed PCGS would do the same, because they had a really good advertising campaign, and because people bought into all of their hype.</p><p><br /></p><p>So when NGC came along a year later, started by the same guy who started PCGS, the only way PCGS could combat the competition was to claim that they were tougher and NGC was an also ran. More hype in other words, and people bought into it.</p><p><br /></p><p>But as time went on and people became better educated regarding coins, and had had time to actually compare NGC to PCGS, they began to realize that PCGS wasn&#039;t really any better or any tougher, and the difference in prices began to drop. Yeah, it happened slowly because change always happens slowly. People are always reluctant to change what they believe. But when ya see it with your eyes enough times, eventually you don&#039;t have any choice but to change what you believe. But there are always those who will hold out and never change.</p><p><br /></p><p>Today it is not at all uncommon to see NGC slabs sell for more than PCGS slabs, regardless of what coin is in the slab. For that matter it is not uncommon to see any given coin in a PCGS slab sell for more, sometimes a lot more even double, than the same coin in another PCGS slab. In other words, they&#039;re 65s, they&#039;re both graded by PCGS, but one sells for double what the other did. Same thing happens with NGC coins. This is because people have become even better educated than they used to be and now they realize that no two coins even graded the same are equal. And if they are not equal then one will sell for more than the other. And that&#039;s what happens today with NGC and PCGS coins - no two of them are equal either. More and more people are buying the coin, not the slab. But even so, the plastic buyers still outnumber the coin buyers. </p><p><br /></p><p>Fifteen years ago if you asked who&#039;s tougher NGC or PCGS and did a poll, PCGS would win hands down and probably by a margin of 3 to 1. Today, run the same poll, and it&#039;s actually been done here several times, and they will come out about even. That shows how much things have changed.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now who&#039;s tougher on what coin ? That depends on who you ask. It also depends on specific types and individual coins within that type, not just denomination. And real life experience shows that to be true. Regardless of what coin there have been many, many examples of a given coin graded by one (and I mean either or), cracked out and submitted to the other, and the coin was upgraded. And it&#039;s gone the other way, again with both companies, and the coin was downgraded. Same thing has happened with graded coins becoming no grade problem coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>So based on that, who&#039;s tougher ? Can you even say who is tougher given that evidence ? Some will claim you can and say this one or that one is, and it will almost inevitably be the one they have always believed was tougher. To really say, you&#039;d have to have an open mind, and very few do.</p><p><br /></p><p>Personally I used to be able to rattle them off with no hesitation as to who was tougher on what coin. But to be honest standards have changed so much, loosened so much, and for both companies, that I don&#039;t think I could say anymore and have any chance of actually being right - even in my own mind. There doesn&#039;t seen to be any rhyme or reason to it anymore, no consistency. I have always said that NGC was more consistent than PCGS, but I don&#039;t even believe that to be true anymore.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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