Posted 06/16/2024 7:44 pm
I haven;t heard the term "garage grading" - it's usually called "basement slabbing" - when someone puts their own coins for sale into a holder of some kind that resembles or implies the grading is from a third party. The imagery is that someone is grading and selling the coins from their basement.
TPG, or third party grading, is when someone who is neither the buyer of a coin nor the seller of a coin, but an independent third party unaffiliated with either buyer or seller, has looked at the coin and determined the grade. PCGS is an example of a TPG: PCGS do not sell the coins they grade.
Obviously, a coin seller is perfectly entitled to look at their own coins, and give their own opinion as to the coin's grade. But a seller isn't an "independent grader" - they have a vested interest in inflating or overgrading their coins, in the hope of getting more money from them, especially from an uneducated or sight-unseen buyer who has nothing to judge a coin by except the grade assigned to it. It's not that they are an amateur or "bad at grading", it's just the temptation to overgrade to extract profits is too great. It's technically not even deceptive - a coin's grade is "just an opinion" - so long as the seller doesn't try to pretend that the grading is actually independent of them.
Example: one of the biggest "basement slabbers" was ebay seller centsles. They always sold coins "graded" by NNC - and NNC was owned and operated by centsles. A few years ago, ebay clamped down on basement slabbers, prohibiting them from claiming TPG status or implying their coins were legitimately TPG graded. Centsles/NNC was forced to shut down operations.
I've never heard the term "garage coins" either, but it might be a reference to the production of fake error coins by making them in the garage workshop - squeezing two coins together in a vice, drilling holes in them, that sort of thing.
TPG, or third party grading, is when someone who is neither the buyer of a coin nor the seller of a coin, but an independent third party unaffiliated with either buyer or seller, has looked at the coin and determined the grade. PCGS is an example of a TPG: PCGS do not sell the coins they grade.
Obviously, a coin seller is perfectly entitled to look at their own coins, and give their own opinion as to the coin's grade. But a seller isn't an "independent grader" - they have a vested interest in inflating or overgrading their coins, in the hope of getting more money from them, especially from an uneducated or sight-unseen buyer who has nothing to judge a coin by except the grade assigned to it. It's not that they are an amateur or "bad at grading", it's just the temptation to overgrade to extract profits is too great. It's technically not even deceptive - a coin's grade is "just an opinion" - so long as the seller doesn't try to pretend that the grading is actually independent of them.
Example: one of the biggest "basement slabbers" was ebay seller centsles. They always sold coins "graded" by NNC - and NNC was owned and operated by centsles. A few years ago, ebay clamped down on basement slabbers, prohibiting them from claiming TPG status or implying their coins were legitimately TPG graded. Centsles/NNC was forced to shut down operations.
I've never heard the term "garage coins" either, but it might be a reference to the production of fake error coins by making them in the garage workshop - squeezing two coins together in a vice, drilling holes in them, that sort of thing.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
