Thank you for all of your responses.
My grade for this coin is AU-55. The
TPG grade was "body bag" for artificial toning. This was one of a few early copper coins that were in my collection that came back in a body bag. (For those who are confused by this, today genuine coins that the TPGs judge to have problems go into "genuine" or "details" holders. Before that such coins were not graded and were sent back in flips with a one or two word message on them why they failed to grade. In essence you got nothing for your grading fee.)
Since I had been a collector for 25 years before slabs came on the market, all my collection was raw. I had all of the major coins graded, and among my gold and silver coins all but one of them got grades that met or exceeded my expectations. Among my copper coins, NGC over graded my 1793 dated coins, but they and PCGS pounded almost everything else with "no grades" or "body bags." I was piqued because some of the coins were condition census pieces according to the EAC experts.
Okay maybe I made a string of bad buys in early copper, although I didn't think so. A few years I sold some of those early copper coins. Much to my chagrin I started seeing a few of them in appear in auctions in straight grade holders. In other words subsequent owners got the coins graded after I got nothing for my money.
Why did this happen? When I submitted the graders at the
TPG didn't how to grade early copper. They were good at grading
Morgan dollars and the like, but copper was beyond their expertise. Some of us paid for their ignorance.
I know that some of think that the grade on the holder is the last word. It isn't. There have been many instances were coins didn't get grades the first time but them in subsequent submissions. There have been many, many cases coins have gotten different grades in multiple submissions.
TPG graders are not perfect. They are human.
Edited by billjones
03/31/2016 09:01 am
First Page
Posted 03/29/2016 11:31 am
