Australian 1922/21 Overdate 3-D.

If it were me I'd try to remove the black stuff around the second 2.

hi Basil, how good is their "exotic" analysis (or their expertise)? I looked up the slabbed 1934 threepence that was posted on this forum a few weeks back as the claimed 1934/3 narrow variety and it is listed as a normal 1934 threepence by PCGS, so their analysis didn't pick that up. Worse yet I've been going through slabbed 1953 Large Denticle florins and found 2 examples of them slabbing a Large Denticle in slabs labeled Small Denticle MS64 and 3 examples of them slabbing non large florins as Large Denticle (2 as MS64 and one as MS65). Clearly they have schoolkid work experience graders supervised by Mr Magoo.

Hi Neal,they are mostly correct with their 'grades' and rarely make the same mistake twice but their "Australian Desk" is not up to scratch on a regular basis.
There is a Thread on this Forum where NGC graded a fake 1923 Half
so none of the 3rd party graders are infallible.

I'll see what the Dealer says next week but I might send it to PCGS to seek their opinion,probably a waste of money but gee that looks likes remnants of a '1',what else could it be?.

Hi Basil and Echidna. I think it is wrong that they cancel the certificate numbers of fake coins that they have slabbed. Yes they should scrap them from the population but by putting their mistakes in a memory hole they deny collectors the opportunity to look at fakes good (or bad) enough to get past the graders so that we can spot any fakes we might either possess or see for sale. I have to thank Echidna for pointing out rim finning on fakes some years ago as it led me to spot 7 high grade fakes in my collection. And at the time I decided to send 2 of them off to PCGS to test their fake spotting skills (they failed and gave both MS65 grades with the 1911 shilling becoming an example of the images they use in the population report of desirable coins. Got Eric to contact them to let them know of their error and they were not happy).
As for their consistency of grading I do own about a thousand of their slabs so I can spot over and undergraded coins and they get it wrong at least 20% of the time. I'm sending off about 70 1953 Large Denticle florins next year in a single submission just to get a good sample for statistical analysis.