CCCS, ICCS, Or PCGS Pro And Cons Of Each Grading Services For First Time

Tread very carefully here... it was merely an opinion... nothing more (just like a third party grading company). If you know 'Old Bill' like we do, you would know there is absolutely nothing demeaning or hint of a superiority complex with him. Bill is actually quite humble and has selflessly given more to the hobby here north of the border than most ever will. Bill always shares his time and knowledge with new collectors, and he would rather see novice collectors spend their money on coins and coin books, and share their knowledge freely, rather than line the pockets of a third party grading company...

As SPP says, I don't feel superior to anyone or any collector. I just feel that way way too many newer collectors think that they "have" to send their stuff to TPG's just to be accepted into the numismatic community. I have a great many friends who certify their coins and who have good concrete reasons for doing so... and I think they they also made the right decisions to do so.

If you are a high-end collector or have a registry set or a handful of very valuable coins that would be susceptible to damage, then TPG's in holders is the way to go. Or you may have heirs that either know nothing about coins or could care less, and you knew that they would sell them immediately to the first rip-off artist that came around, then TPG's are for you. I think that coin collecting is a hobby, not an potential investment opportunity. High end or educated collectors know how to specifically grade and could care less what holder or TPG was used ...they buy the coin, not the piece of paper. A holder with an opinion glued on it does not increase the value of any coin .. it does, however, allow you to enter the electronic marketplace so that more people can see it.

It kills me to see people on these sites debating whether to certify their coins, and absolutely digs at my chest when I see it is someone who wants to certify 67-68 bullion pieces .. put out in the millions and the lowest graded chunk of metal will be a 66. As far as the market and the marketplace ... unless you are dealing with good top-end stuff, you will make a lot more from your coins by concentrating on grading skills, good clear honest photography, and customer service than you ever will with a piece of paper. All of those "skills" are free and you get to keep them and improve on them. All you are doing with a TPG is making someone else's wallet thicker.

I consider basebal a friend and respect his opinion on many things. The TPGs are a thing we disagree on - which is OK.

He and I were going to discuss this off of the forum and somehow that fell to the side.

I don't know if I would use the term "brainwashing." Instead, as with most things nowadays, I see it as people are unknowingly "trained by the market environment." In the past 30 years the internet has become a major part of life, and everything has changed drastically. A lot of this is marketing (which drives the internet).




I have seen very few times when it has been valid to claim mass acceptance accurately gauges validity concerning a business/ideal/concept etc. Mass acceptance nowadays is normally a product of marketing. People who have the time to research in depth often are not surprised to find the stability and validity they have faith in are nowhere near what is being touted.

Public opinion is not a scientific basis on which to establish an opinion.

Galileo was right - not the masses.

You really don't have to "Act within the next 24 hours because product supply is limited."

Yes, despite ridicule from the media (and vast media pressures to stock up on supplies - marketing) etc., Y2K was NOT a world stopping disaster (computer geeks - not so common back then) knew this.

Despite the prominent mass warnings of the 80s an early 90s, eggs are actually a very healthy food.

Hey, guess what? We are NOT growing palm trees on Lake Erie despite the 80s daily, incessant (understatement by far) news media warnings of the ozone hole growing and allowing in cosmic radiation that would warm us up to make such a drastic difference. The ozone hole farce was immediately stifled when the hole closed itself in Y2K (LOL!). And we were assured science "proved" the ozone hold could never "heal."

Checking up on medical numbers shows there has been no decrease in the percentage of people dying from coronary heart disease despite the market for anti-statin drugs booming for ages now.

I can fill pages and pages with this kind of thing.

The non-agressive training of the masses by the advent of the internet is what made for slabbing to grow in mass acceptance. Before that time, TPGS were generally deemed as a non-essential side market trying to make money from the hobby.

Oh no! Earle42 - you are using idea based on the masses!

Exactly. And this conundrum is why I wanted to talk to, and did, people who graded for the TPGs. I wanted to, and did, go at this from a standpoint of, "OK, so are these companies legite? I want to know." I examined the process of grading itself and found no accountability in the methods they use to grade. They deliberately keep grading as an "art." They will not tell why they assign a certain grade.

A computer based scientific method to grade was developed with available tech of the 90s and abandoned. The only fallacies in the system were one point would have needed to be assigned by a human for eye appeal, and then there was the qustion of the algorithm used to grade (which could have been made public for scrutiny).

However, such a precise system of a rock solid standard would definitely be bad for business. There would be no income for re-slabbing and crossovers. The actual number of MS70 ASEs each year would be known. Nowadays I have talked with large dealers who brought it to my attention the number of MS70 ASEs are a marketing as shown by the monster boxes they submit being assigned 20% MS70s consistently. The 20% allows just enough out there so people will hope to get the grade assigned to their raw coin and pay for the gamble.

Physical data - as the dealers told me - start to look at slabbed MS70 coins. I did. It took very little time to find one with small dings, etc.

An example of this was when PCGS was offering a free MS70 graded Statehood Quarter to promote their new idea of people posting their collections online (thus creating competition and more money for people to slab). The coin's rim ding does not make me question why it got an MS70 grade at all. Neither do the problems with the MS70 slabbed ASEs I got from small groups of coins I bought at various times. Some were good - in fact they were just as good as MS69s I had that were not in MS70 slabs for some "unknown" reason.

Check it out for yourself.

I would like it explained how the same masses who consider the TPG marketing department to be giving an accurate claim are also the same masses now wanting to see a CAC sticker to verify the TPG marketing's rhetoric is valid!

We all hate when we find we have wasted money. It makes it very hard for us to see an issue objectively.

Case in point: The existence of CAC should speak volumes to those who put a lot of faith in TPGs - and does. However, the unfortunate message being TAKEN by those spending the money is one of "WOW - look! I have two sources of experts verifying my slab!"

The question they should be asking themselves is, "Hold on a minute! Since not every slab can qualify for a CAC - doesn;t this prove the TPGs are not what they claim to be?

I can understand human error being factored in - a few slabs would likely not get a CAC sticker. But human error would not account for the myriads of CAC stickers out there! How in the world can CAC be in business if the TPGS actually do what they claim?

It is a sad testimony to public training of mindset, and further proof the TPGs are not up to their "mass acceptance, that CAC has actually gotten to the place where people see CAC as being necessary for a higher level coin!

We humans hate to abandon faith. However, the data above - and believe me I shortened this book I am writing here - can be found and verified by anyone who has time to do the footwork.

Peer pressure and mass acceptance normally aid us in making choices which are not accurate (see both sides of the political aisle). These techniques do make marketing companies very happy though. Hey... maybe buying a pet rock is not so crazy after all! Everyone else is doing it! I dated myself - google it.


Life taught me long ago to research - not someone else's ideas or summaries concerning data/facts - by looking at the data with no preconceived notion dominating the research. Life also taught me my own limited life experience does not always include a holistic view I can trust as fact. I cannot afford to assign emotional value to how correct or incorrect my opinion may be if I want to actually know fact.

The above issues are those I need to be shown how I have interpreted the data in error before I can see TPGs as being legitimate. And if the verifiable data I am presented with shows beyond doubt my interpretations are incorrect - then great! I will heave learned fact - something more valuable than any opinion I have based in any way upon my past actions or personal desires.

I'll have to dig through my spam folder and see if it ended up in there somehow, I hadn't seen a reply but sounds like you wrote one.




It's not deliberate it's just how it is. Several of the factors that go into a grade are subjective measurements which have been a part of a grade before the TPGs started.




It's more than that, a company tried to grade purely technically before and the market hated it. Coins that looked like dogs having the same grade as beautiful coins because of the number of hits is not something that collectors have ever wanted.




CAC is an entirely separate discussion really. They only do certain coins and there are plenty of people that support the TPGs that don't care for CAC. In general though they're just a second opinion like getting a second opinion from a DR. In their case the market did pervert what they actually do somewhat where some developed a belief that a coin is a dog without a sticker, which is only true some of the time and not the majority of the time.




Because no matter what grade you examine there will always be a high end and a low end to that grade. The idea that everything CAC doesn't sticker is wrong is one of the great misunderstands that people who really didn't know what they were talking about started spreading around. Unfortunately too many people believe that now. For example a coin can be a low end 65 and not sticker and be properly graded.




Not really. When people shell out mid 4 or 5/6 plus figures on a coin they want all the reassurances that can be offered when spending that type of money. That's human nature to want every possible assurance when spending large amounts of money on those coins. There's also a difference that collectors at those levels understand between a coin that would CAC at a grade lower or a coin that would not CAC a grade lower from being net graded.




There is absolutely no question that the big two are legitimate. There is no reason that should ever be questioned. You can question who grades better or who will do better ect, but there is nothing illegitimate going on

I think basebal21 has some good points here. I personally learned a lot from sending my coins to TPGs and I've never had issues selling them. Not a single return. Not so true with raw coins. If you buy coins at coin shows it probably does not make any difference because you can examine the coin. Buying from a picture is a different story. TPGs are there to offer a 'second opinion'. As a buyer, you can take it or leave it.

It's all up to you. But with all the fakes I'd think twice before buying expensive raw coins. Even from so-called reputable sources.

I agree these people are getting good, hands-on experience. The education the learner gets though, is taylored to the specimens they use for the study - which are the TPGs slabs.

In effect, what these collectors learn is how certain TPGs will grade different coins. I think people learning about slabs from slabs is also why there is so much online discussion of which TPG does the job "best," which pays more attention to {fill in the blank}, which one is more consistent with {FITB}, etc.



Sounds good. I figured you were just busy.




Well - making it short, I personally used a scanning device in the late 90s - at a plastics plant QR dept - which was designed to find microscopic anomalies with the parts we were making. This machine could report all sorts of numbers and imperfections accurately and consistently down to the micron level. This is more than enough scanning a coin, setting parameters as to even what kind of damage, /cleaning etc. A machine is NOT capable though of grading eye appeal - Eye appeal could be a single point (and stated as such) after the machine does the verifiable and highly accountable job of grading the coin. And this was almost 20 years ago now. Imagine what our computers nowadays could do as compared to systems back then. Do we really think that nowadays data as to how a coin received its grade is beyond our reach?

Personally, I *think* some of our phones might very well have the ability to grade coins consistently seeing as facial recognition is no big deal anymore - even at differing angles. Any programmer familiar with facial recognition programming and algorithms want to make a million on the app store?



Exactly. Two points:
1. The dog being called beautiful was simply the technical grade which could be authenticated/consistent. A point would need be given by a human for eye appeal.
However, I would like to see slabbing companies announce they will now only be grading on a technical, verifiable grade - the grade is ONLY about wear and details. Aprt of this would be the TPGs saying they leave the eye appeal up to the collector (where it originated and is anyway).
The mindset shift would be from, "Was this coin graded accurately," to "do I want this MS70 without as much color/luster as this other MS70?" But again, by keeping the "art" at the company, the unknown gamble is always there and generates more business.

2. This internet generation now trust computers a lot more than in the late 90s (understatement). Back then comuters were far from being in every home, they were seen as maybe "taking over the world," and our system now being run by these crazy machines meant the Y2K bug was going to put us back into the stone age (yes - the warnings were this persistent). The grading shift by TPGs even could have been made 10 years ago or more. But marketers are smarter than this. The shift would be a very bad business strategy though.

The result is that instead of having an accountable system, we have CAC.



The very idea that CAC could have come as far as they have shows a progression of increased acceptance of typical marketing strategies. Everything is always NEW and IMPROVED! Last year's model is no longer the "perfect answer to all our problems" it was touted to be - this years model is such a great improvement!

The very idea that CAC stickers exist in the numbers they do could only happen if the experts were not the experts they claimed to be. CAC is also after profits (legitimate), and they are now simply just acquiring the status they hoped they would receive - instead of ridicule - when they started out.




Getting a second opinion is done when there is doubt about your original Dr.'s diagnosis and how that mistake could affect your life.

Paying for a second opinion is different when health and life are not on the line.

When someone hires an expert to fix their car, do they hire (key word) people after the job is done to verify the job was done right? Why not?

How many people buy and carry their own pool PH testing kits to the YMCA to make sure the PH levels are within proper levels? Why not?

When we get gas, do we have our own personal meters we attach to the hose to make sure the pump meters are measuring properly? Why not?

Redundancy is normally seen as foolish when someone pays hard earned cash for an expert's services.

If company B can make a business by showing a good number of company A's product is not worthy of the expert level claimed by company A, then company A is either incapable of, or simply not doing, what they claim.

As much as TPGs are perceived as being THE coin experts, should it not be expected that a second opinion is not only redundant, but shouldn't it be expected so few slabs would NOT get a CAC sticker that the market would not support the CAC sticker business?

In other words, if the TPGs were up to what they claim, then the minsdet should/would be one of, "Why bother wasting my money paying for a CAC sticker - almost all of the slabs submitted get them anyway?"



Computerized technical grading of the coin's actual features would alleviate this to a very great degree - but be bad for business.

quote] The idea that everything CAC doesn't sticker is wrong is one of the great misunderstands that people who really didn't know what they were talking about started spreading around. Unfortunately too many people believe that now. For example a coin can be a low end 65 and not sticker and be properly graded.

The programs are there, they did experiments and didn't like the results. I would much rather have human experts grading my coins than lines of code the IT department wrote that very few if any of the actual experts would be able to tell if the code was being manipulated or not. You also have to code every series differently and even different dates and different mints differently and then you end up using a human anyway. Not to mention trying to code luster grading would be a pain and someone would figure out what the program isn't able to pick up on when it comes to doctoring. Tricking a computer would be easier than an expert when it comes to authenticity as well.




There is nothing wrong with you wanting that, but the market has rejected and penalized any TPG that overemphasized technical grading. Eye appeal is will and always has been king when it comes to collecting. There are always people who are exceptions to that but as a whole the market has always preferred eye appeal. If you want TPGs to solely grade technically convince everyone else to start demanding they do it and it will happen. They don't because that isn't what collectors want.




Again that's the misunderstanding that has been spread around the internet. To put CAC in it's most simple basic forum, they identify premium coins they would want to buy. Nothing more. People need to let go of the misconception that things that don't sticker have to be graded wrong. Every grade will always have premium coins, average coins, low end coins, fantastic eye appeal coins, average looking coins, and below average looking coin. Just because something is low end for the grade and doesn't sticker doesn't mean it is graded wrong. The truth is the majority of coins that don't sticker are graded properly, some even don't sticker that are strong for the grade because of a minor thing that CAC just doesn't like on it.

But if you take nothing else away from this take this: CAC is NOT judging whether or not coins are properly graded, they are identifying the ones that are premium quality for the grade nothing more




Completely disagree, if I had a surgery coming up I am getting a second opinion no matter what. If I am about to spend 5k/10k/50k ect on a coin I want every relevant opinion on it. The only difference between asking a dealer friend and CAC for their thoughts is that JA and the CAC crew are better graders than the majority of dealers. They're just simply aren't that many people out there on that level, some work at TPGs, some are dealers, a couple even collectors but it is an elite club at that skill level.




Again CAC has nothing to do with saying something is graded wrong. They're essentially like the pro scout who is looking to identify the premier players, if they don't have interest it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with them it's just that they aren't in the upper level of the group.




The only way for almost all of them to get them anyway is to just intentionally undergrade low end coins. Otherwise you already start out with at least half of every grade range that won't get stickered if they are properly grading the coins instead of saying lets drop this a grade so it'll sticker.




It's really mostly the anti-slab/anti-cac crowd that keeps hounding that fallacy. The market drivers such as the respected expert dealers understand that CAC is picking premium quality not just saying that anything without a sticker is graded wrong. Of course the CAC coins sell for more, they're generally the nicer ones. The majority of people that use the service and like it understand that unstickered coins don't mean it's wrong, its mostly the critics that keep trying to use CAC to say the TPGs cannot grade when really they are just misrepresenting what CAC actually is doing.



It's very unlikely. The thing everyone seems to forget is that CAC only works because of the level of expertise they hold. There are several spin off versions for different coin types currently and the market is very meh about them. Photoseal is respected and desired for Indians, but CAC is by far the most successful and respected simply because of the truly elite graders they have. They don't even charge collectors for coins that don't sticker and you can request feedback on why they did or did not.




Lots of people claim to be ex-graders that weren't, even if they were for all I know they were fired or have a bone to pick such as many ex-employees do in other lines of work. If a large conspiracy existed it would have come out by now. I've used the TPGs many times and there has been no favoritism or holding my grades back because I am just a collector. I have even gotten a top pop grade before and I am a nobody to them which I would have never gotten if they only saved those for the big dealers like some people suggest. Regardless of any conspiracies people may want to try and push which is almost always for personal gain and/or getting lower grades than they wanted, experience will show you they are nothing more than just people talking.

Also 20% isn't the standard ASE monster box rate. The rate is generally consistent to within a plus or minus range of a percentage given the larger submission number going in and the fairly consistent quality making those now a days, but it does vary from year to year. Some years it is much higher and other times occasionally a product comes out that falls way short of expectations like the 2012 ASE set where the 70 rate was lower then normal. There is nothing random about how they assign 70s. Sure there will be some mistakes as nothing in this world is perfect, but he likely needs to freshen his grading skills and/or has a beef to pick with them. You can read plenty of threads on the CU forum by the major dealers about 70 rates who have much more experience and do much larger volume then him and their accounts directly contradict such conspiracies.




A true slider coin can have that happen. However the crack out game is much much harder than the internet or people make it sound. Anyone who believes it to be that easy can try for themselves if they don't believe me. The majority of coins have a plus or minus grade range of 1. The exceptions being where the next grade up is a significant value jump and people would honestly be surprised how consistent they are around those jumps. I've seen a plus graded CAC stickered coin come back with the exact same grade many multiples of times that was tried numerous times because of the mid 4 figure value jump in the next grade. The population reports wouldn't be so inflated below the big jumps if it was simply as easy as resubmitting.

But really that plus or minus of 1 is really just how the subjective aspects of a grade can change. If I gave anyone a 100 coins to grade, then had you grade 1000 more coins in between and mixed the same 100 in with another 1000 over the coming months they wouldn't grade the 100 exactly the same every-time. There's no conspiracy when a grade shifts a little, that's just the nature of grading and the standards themselves have evolved over the years as our knowledge base of the series has grown with the plethora of research that has been done in the last couple decades.

Sssssh. Don't let the cat out of the bag.