When Is A 3c Silver A 3c Nickel? 1866

These sticker errors have been avidly sought by dealers I've seen at shows. Some years ago, I saw two dealers at a FUN show who were displaying groupings of slabbing errors in their cases.

From what I've seen over the years, NGC tends to make by far the most certification errors. This REALLY makes me suspicious about their numerical grades. Making errors on coin types, dates, varieties and such is one thing and laughable at times, but a numerical error can potentially be quite costly! From my observations as a collector of exonumia, NGC is untrustworthy. Sadly, they tend to be the main TPG for exonumia.

Over on the other forum you were worried if CAC would re-sticker it if you had NGC correct the slab. I'm curious why you would bother. Anybody who wants it for the coin knows that it's not 3CN, and others would be attracted to the label error.

Wow! Mistakes are bound to happen.

To me, this shows that CAC is just as worthless as NGC ,,,, Far more of a cash cow than a certification service. IMHO, what frauds! Apparently, BOTH 'services" seriously lack any measure of quality control. How on earth can two certification services BOTH make the same, so-called error? Seriously, did they even look at the coin? How can the numerical grade be trusted, when TWO services fail to properly identify the coin ? Appalling scenario, this ....

A few mistakes out of millions of coins examined does not mean that there is a lack of quality control. Any enterprise run by humans will always have mistakes made at some point. Considering the constant disagreement regarding the accuracy of the assigned grades from the various TPG's, expecting them to perform flawlessly in the other aspects of the encapsulation process is wishful thinking at best.

Quality control is not perfect, either, otherwise nothing in our lives would ever need to be returned to the people who made it.

It is not (and should not be) CAC's job nor their responsibility to verify that the label is correct. Their job is to assess the condition of the coin relative to the numerical grade which was assigned by the TPG.

jimbucks, have you shared this on the CAC forum? Would be interesting to hear from them what their general policy is on items such as this.

I suspect it's as kbbpll describes, but if CAC ignores typos/mechanical label errors I can see some possible issues arising; for example, in the instance of a common coin being misattributed as a rare variety. I wonder if CAC would still ignore that?

Back to the NGC label error; several years ago I saw on ebay two modern commemorative dollars from two different dealers, and both coins were labeled by NGC as the wrong type (I think they were both Infantry dollars labeled as Army dollars). I notified the dealers, and one removed his listing, thanked me and said he'd be sending to NGC to get a correct label. The other dealer re-listed his at a higher price because it was a "rare label error"...

To add to my CAC confusion, their "coins accepted" calls out specific Lincoln Cent doubled dies and specific Jefferson 5c DDO, RPD and OMM as coins they accept, but not 1936 Type 3 or 1972 Type 2 DDOs. If all they're doing is slapping an A or B quality sticker on the grade, why call out that handful of varieties as accepted? It implies they're also validating more than just the grade, but I don't see this explained anywhere. Perhaps they're confused about what they do too. Oh well, this is merely an intellectual exercise for me, I'll don't really care what CAC thinks about the coins I have or buy.

Thanks for clarifying, @jimbucks. If you want to sell it but GC won't take it with the slab error, I can appreciate your quandary.