Who Has The Deeper Capability For Variety Attribution: PCGS Or NGC?

Honestly? Neither.

ICG and ANACS will attribute anything the can find in a reference. The other three have much more restricted lists - and as you've found, seem to repeatedly be castigated for poor workmanship or just lazyness.

Want a real eye opener? Read the essay in my signature concerning the incredibly rookie level No FG variety attribution for Kennedy half dollars. While I use (linked) PCGS data in the essay to show a very high degree of error...we are talking over 30% being very generous. And a large failure rate on this is evident on NGC and ANACS holder when you start making it a point to look for the FG or remnants. The company specification is that there can be no trace of the FG. But they know people will buy the slab instead of the coin and so you only have, at best, a 1 in 3 chance of it being what the slab says.

As is shown in the essay, PCGS does not even know that the 1982 No FG is actually a variety you don't have to see the REV to tell. The 1s in the date are different than an FG. Yet PCGS will label the real ones or the ones with polished off (or partially polished off and still visible FG) coins both as being No FG.

People don't like this kind of proof b/c when they spend a lot of time, money , and put a lot of faith in a company b/c they don't like seeing they don't get their money's worth. Yet the facts are there and linked for anyone to verify.

The truly sad part in all of this is that with some of the higher graded mislabeled No FG's, people have lost thousands of dollars buying them instead of looking at the actual coin to find out their faith in the ink, rather than looking at the coin, fooled them into not getting what they paid so much money for. And that, as well, is documented and linked in the essay.

This is the verifiable reality of the companies.

Recently when CAC started to reslab PCGS etc. slabs sent to them with a lot of the coins coming back as cleaned and very devalued, there was an outcry as well.

So...either the disappointed people have to admit their faith was misplaced from the start in believing CAC was capable of assessing other company slabs to affix stickers, or those people have to admit their newly devalued coins now in CAC slabs are correct, and their faith was misplaced when they trusted PCGS, NGC, or ANACS etc. to slab their coins to begin with.

Or people simply ignore it all b/c none of us like it when we can see we have been mistaken. But those people wanting to crack out the CAC slabs and get the old grade back are also going to be in for a surprise b/c their coin was cracked out. And even submission to the same company is not going to guarantee that coin gets the same grade again. This is what happens when subjectivity is mistaken for something legitimate and verifiable.

Thanks for the kind comment. We need legitimate and measurable standards to be adopted by the companies so people know they are getting what they pay for.

" don't send it to ANACS or ICG because not many people will trust those holders with any a high value coin."
Seriously ?
There are lots of properly graded high value coins in ANACS Holders.
These days , (2022-24) I would trust ANACS as much as the others.
Also customer service actually exists at ANACS unlike NGC , PCGS.

Thanks CoinAdvocate.

First do let me say I a not slamming anyone for liking slabbed coins and collecting them. I understand the lure. I even can see if someone likes to collect the same coin with different labels simply b/c hobbies are about what an individual deems to be fun.

My beef with the companies is that the more I study them, the more I see they are taking advantage of the hobby and ruining the focu on the coins themselves. As a short back up to that last statement, look at how the genius marketing plan of making online registry sets has shot prices for MS70 slabs through the roof on many coins. THs more newbies not understanding they are not going to get an MS70 slab gamble the 200.00 to slab what they think is a good looking coin and end up with nothing but questions (that the companies will not answer). I see this as profiteering (as I do them deliberately not using legitimate verifiable standards for grading).

I am not specifically picking on PCGS, but since they are the ones the marketplace seems to call the best. I am wondering how someone becomes "best" at giving out grades that are verifiable by no means whatsoever!

Charging membership fees:
I also believe the idea of a membership fee acts to be a good marketing strategy to inadvertently "buy" loyalty. It is very hard for we humans to be objective after spending ~200.00 in a company when confronted with e the idea we may have been wrong/made a mistake in doing so.
I think membership fees it also creates a "country club" type mentality. Anyone putting money into something will have a hard tim e facing it was not a smart thing to do (when applicable) .
This happens in all walks of life with things like Mac vs WIndows, DeWalt vs. Makita, Ford vs. Chevy, McDonalds vs. Burger King, favorite football teams, etc. I find it no the non-memebership coercing grading companies are looked down upon in the market by many. Coerced membership, to me, is ajust a psychological marketing ploy. Put another way, if ANACS can thrive without needing membership fees, then certainly the larger volume companies could also thrive b/c they have more business!

PCGS "guarantee" review in (shorter version!):

Read the PCGS guarantee very carefully. You will find its far from as rosy looking as people who don't read it think it is...

Briefly, the PCGS "guarantee":
1. Says PCGS guarantees to use the method to grade your coin that they say they use (read it - no kidding).
2. If someone thinks their coin is over graded and send it back in (uh huh - to make the coin worth less), two options kick in:
a. PCGS will offer to buy the coin from the owner at the "current market value" - which PCGS later in the guarantee defines as
"dealer replacement cost" and to be determined by PCGS.
- to this I say it seems a bit of a gray area to to use the term "current market value" throughout the text.
b. PCGS will pay the owner the difference (PCGS determined dealer replacement value - not actual market value) between the
wrong higher grade and the new lower grade while the owner keeps the coin.
- in this case the owner could have just put the coin on ebay and saved the money, time, and hassle.

And...just how many people when getting a higher grade than expected are disappointed enough to want it to be devalued? Add to that that most people use the services b/c they do not feel they CAN grade a coin and you get most people not willing to question THE experts' opinion who graded the coin.


Read the fine print!

Want one more? One of the final statements of the guarantee says that this guarantee only applies if the coin is more than two grade points overgraded. But since there is absolutely no science behind their grading methods, just how would a person prove the two points?

OK..one more minor point...legal action can only be taken to make them honor (devaluing your coin/slab) in Orange County, CA. ?

Video marketing:
There is a video entitled "We took the PCGS Grading Challenge" online posted by Coinweek editor Mr. Morgan.

One more area...marketing. Go here:
http://goccf.com/t/471786

Trust is one of the main issues. If you have not seen the essay in my signature here is the link:
Common grading company shortcomings & resulting co$tly mi$take$ to collectors (using Kennedy No FG halves):
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/7ca91bdd0/w...939059710007

Way too many people, as shown in the essay, have lost thousands of dollars by the companies mislabeling halves as no FG that, by their own cited/linked to standards, are not No FG halves. There is a (being generous) a 30% error shown/linked to by examples in that essay.


When I was researching the No FG variety of Kennedy half dollars as slabbed by the companies (quite a few years ago now) it made me understand the expertise levels of these companies is greatly overrated by the marktet. The market being made of a lot of people who invested in a membership making them more psychologically apt to want to view the companies as being what their marketter's claim they are.

That is NOT an insult. It is just how I have come to view the ones that charge membership for their services (NGC and PCGS) and how the market looks down upon slabs not produced by those companies. It is psychological since none of the companies use any verifiable means to grade coins. Again, without something verifiable, how can one company possible be rated as being better at grading than another? And again, the re-slabbing "game" (as I call it) again reflects the truth in this statement.

My trust in their actual grading has been steadily declining as I have put in more and more hours of research. I view them now as any other modern company who is prioritizing shareholder profits vs. taking pride in a job well done. This is not uncommon in the businessworld nowadays, and unfortunately the coin hobby is far from immune to it.

Well said. Fortunately my buy sources always have a return policy so I have some comfort in knowing a false attribution purchase can be negated/returned.

But this does bring up another point IMO. It goes the other way too. I know a submitter must 'request' a non-RedBook attribution or the TPG will just ignore. I do understand the TPG position to some extent. But for attributions that are blatantly obvious (but not requested by submitter), shame on the TPGs for not picking up the phone and saying "hey, ya know...".

Case in point: About a month ago an AU 1856-S Seated quarter was on auction. It was a glaring S over s albeit unattributed (PCGS). Me and one other bidder noticed (out of at least a dozen bidders). True value was 10x over what the bidding was at until we got involved (I lost) so thankfully the owner did cash out properly.