Real Stinker Of An ICCS Grade. Anyone Else Ever Experienced This?

Maybe PCGS thought the colors were artificially done with chemicals and not natural aged toning. All the dark spots especially on reverse are probably environmental damage.

Maybe someone changed the coin's surface color after PCGS graded it, improved it's appearance, colored it to an all brown patina which could have improved the grade, it looks different in the ICCS photo. Or perhaps it's just the lighting. All the major grading companies sometimes get it wrong. I have a mislabled PCGS graded coin with the wrong year LOL

I don't know anything about ICCS so can't comment about them.

The PCGS TRUE VIEW photos are great for showing blemishes like the environmental damage on that large cent, but when you have the coin in (holder) in hand in might not be so apparent, which is I think what happens often when a PCGS or NGC coin with "details" gets cracked and submitted to other TPGs that don't have photo database. Unfortunately, it then becomes buyer beware when looking at the photos of a coin in a soft holder from ICCS or CCCS (Canadian TPGs). As previously mentioned, probably safe to stay away from a coin you can't return if you're not happy with it in hand. I will say though, IMO that that is still one hell of a coin...details or not, in that grade/condition. The store that coin is from in the ICCS holder (you can tell from the logo), is great. They accept returns if you aren't happy, and that's how all sellers should conduct business. I never hesitate to buy from them, even when the pictures might make me wonder...

There's a market reality to TPGs that exists whether we like it or not; they determine a marketable grade and until a coin is in a credible TPG holder, its marketability is diminished. In a perfect world, there would be no need for them but we live in this world where sadly, they're important to the marketability of the coin.

I believe ICCS may be (rapidly) diminishing as a credible grading entity, based on the grading standards the market now demands and some of their grading practices that have come to light.

I'll say MS-63 R&B

The core trouble is, that "marketability" is, to a significant extent, to people who are not coin collectors. That slab transforms a coin from something of interest to a specialist, to something which can be bought and sold as a commodity based on price quotations in a catalogue, without any knowledge of or interest in what it is. Thus we have all this money going into "investment-grade" coins, which are then held by a money manager or as collateral by a bank, not by collectors ; and the effect of forcing the market price up, while attractive if you are trying to liquidate your collection, keeps new collectors from entering the hobby.

From my vantagepoint, and someone who has collected earnestly for maybe 45-50 years, it just seems to me that there has just been "grade creep", where an MS62 thirty years ago becomes a 63 or 64 with grading in 2015 or 2020. I think that collectors that are looking to store stuff away until after they retire or old age don't rush in, they buy the coin, not the plastic and fictional numbers. I don't think that people laying out lots of Franklins in the last few years are buying the plastic and not someone else's numbers. They are buying the coins as they see them, and probably searching the internet to see if any coin or plastic is true to their own eyes.