Professional Numismatist Guild Ranking Of TPG'ers

Yep, that's why I choose ngc, pcgs and occasionally anacs

Cost of service provided, PCGS should have been poor for submitting Colonials and errors...$50.

I can't say I agree with this chart.

Concerning "avalability of pricing info"...It right there for everyone to see at ICG, ANACS, and PCGS and NGC...not sure why those two are higher.

Concerning "customer service".....the only rep I've ever dealt with that seemed to really know anything about coins was at ICG. A PCGS lady (on the phone) didn't even know what a Buffalo nickel was.

As far as grading accuracy...I've seen enough garbage from every TPG that ever existed that I think "superior" is far too nice a superlative to use.

Professional numismatists judging the TPG's.

The TPG's if they are any good, would also employ professional numismatists. That could make the compiling of such a list, and the criteria used, somewhat industrially incestuous.

TPG's should be graded by a more independently minded third party. I guess that is the way biggfredd would have been thinking.

Very easy for some behind the scenes industrial politics to be involved.

Wow, I had no idea that;

1). This was an old listing of info
b). That some fur would fly
3). Who was ACG? Perhaps why they were "unacceptable" & "poor".

Although I did know that this was an opinionated column and subject to debate.

Because not all are submitted. CAC restricts the amount of people able to submit.

But also if it doesn't sticker doesn't mean the grade is wrong. Are some over graded yes, it happened. But CAC only stickers the middle and upper ends of grade. Something can be a low end 66, not sticker and still be graded accurately

As mentioned this is an old survey, it was also a biased one. It was a survey of PNG members (who use NGC and PCGS almost exclusively), by PNG (who recommend to their members that they should use NGC and PCGS exclusively), to rank services that they don't use. Would you expect NGC and PCGS to not come out on top?

Coin World also did a survey of the services by sending the same coins to each of them. In the PNG survey for circulated coins they put NGC and PCGS at the top, but in the Coin World study the grading of the circulated coins were all over the map. NGC and PCGS did score higher on the MS coins though. Interestingly though if you took the range of grades for each coin (circ or MS) and determined the average grade from that range, ACG hit that average grade more than any other service.

And nipcoins is right about accuracy of attributions, NGC and PCGS are well known for having poor records for attribution accuracy (in a recent auction sale of pieces sold by variety that were graded by NGC their attributions were wrong 10% of the time. And that is an improvement.) For accuracy of attribution your best options are SEGS or ANACS. NGC and PCGS also do not attribute as wide a range of varieties as ANACS or SEGS. Until recently what they would attribute was very restricted, and they still often got it wrong.