Another Reason I Distrust PCGS Grading ... An 1861-O Half

Yes, Child, that thought occurred to me. However, the abrasive. scrub lines are quite prominent on both sides of this coin. IMHO, even if PCGS did net-grade this coin, an undesignated or subversive practice without labeling, mind you, this coin has serous surface damage. How is one to know when PCGS decides to net-grade a coin if the label fails to designate same? Are subsequent owners of PCGS coins then left to automatically assume that any holder lacking a "details" or "environmental damage" warning have been net-graded? Ridiculous but logical, it seems to me, given this net-grade scenario.

Terry ... I've gotten some great buys online, a few slabbed but generally not; this, because I do trust my eyes. I started this post to encourage folks to look past the label, even if it is the almighty PCGS brand.

Exo, Are you sure that these lines we see are from cleaning the coin and not from cleaning of a rusted or otherwise dirty die so it could be used some more?

Your monitor is more than likely newer and higher quality than mine so I am in no position to state anything with certainty but, on this monitor at least, the fields, especially on the reverse, look as if the die was less than new.

Yes, Tryna, I see the lines clearly, abrasively dug into the coin's surface. IMHO, this coin is more damaged than cleaned. I regard dipping and wiping as forms of cleaning that are quite commonly seen with our early coins. When a coin has been abrasively scrubbed, resulting in lines being dug into a coin's surface, I'm inclined to say that's beyond cleaning. I'm certainly not opposed to net-grading as a means of arriving at value, but I do think it needs to be noted by a TPG when done. In the case of this 1861-O, I could see it being given an AU grade as others suggest. That said, regardless of the grade, it's a DETAILS coin, methinks - PMD.

I do not disagree that the photos provided appear to show mechanical cleaning, especially prevalent in the fields. However, I'm not seeing those lines go into the design elements themselves. If it is mechanical cleaning that we should be able to see the lines follow from the fields and across the design elements, too.

The bottom line to all this is that I believe it is virtually impossible for anyone to be absolutely certain of cleaning, even mechanical cleaning, from a single photo. Especially when it is obvious that there are a heck of a lot of scratches in the slab itself.

This very well may be a case of a scrubbed piece getting in a no details holder. It also may be that from the three photos we are provided we are seeing something that isn't there.

Given that the PCGS guys really are professional, do it for a living, have probably graded many thousands of SLH, and continue to be one of the two companies that everyone uses on a regular basis - I would guess with PCGS rather than against them. They had it in their hands. I've got three pictures.

The old adage: "buy the coin and not the holder" will always hold true.

Having said that, I truly wish the TPG's would find a way to be much more consistent and transparent. A seller selling the 1861 Seated Half shown above as a raw problem free would be looked down on. TPG's who grade problem coins as coins problem free should be called out. It might make small difference. Mistakes happen and then there is the maybe not mistakes that happen. (ie: It would be great if I could get the the same grades for the same coins as say Heritage and the other big auction houses do.) Either way if a 1861 Half has hairlines the TPG holder should say so, period. Boo to the TPG that falls short of their own standards. I don't expect perfection but do expect better than what I to often see, which is substandard grading.

The above is all easy for me to say. I am not the grader that has 10 seconds to grade each coin. I am not the grader that just got a pallet of ASE's to grade by the end of the day. And I am not likely to be a professional grader hired by any TPG. For a majority of coins the TPG graders do good work. I just wish that they great work!...but they don't.

So educate yourself. Learn how the market is skewed.
And "buy the coin and not the holder"!!!

If PCGS (and NGC, and ANACS, and ICG) body bagged every 19th century and older coin that's ever been wiped or dipped, 80%+ of their graded coins would be in details holders.

I think people forget that prior to the 1970s coin cleaning was not only acceptable but expected, the more so, the further back you go; there are plenty of cleaned 19th century proofs that attest to this. (QDB relates a story in his guide to Morgans about how the government used to have an employee whose only job was to take the Proofs out, wipe them, and put them back!)

Truly "problem-free" coins that have NEVER been cleaned, wiped, dipped, or rubbed at some point are substantially rarer than the population reports would suggest, and most experienced collectors pay premiums to acquire those coins well above the grade. (This is one reason why CAC coins bring in the dough -- it saves collectors the effort of having to cherrypick the best examples from hundreds of choices, and lazy people will always pay for convenience.)

The system they use (a random person spending 30 seconds looking at one of a thousand coins that day, in a series they may or may not know about) is far from perfect, and we see this all the time with undergraded, overgraded, and straight out wrong coins in their expensive holders. Back when most or all coin purchases were done in person, you didn't need slabs to tell you what a coin graded; you could look at it and make your own conclusions. You bought raw coins all day long. But with the Internet bringing in 80% or more of the business for some dealers, and the ability to manipulate photos, not having slabbed coins is simply no longer an option. Online buyers, collectors and investors demand it, because they'd rather be 80-90% sure that a coin is of a certain grade and quality, than 10-20% sure, which is about as good as you can ask for with raw coins, bad photos, juiced photos, and no way to physically examine the coin.

As this coin shows, the TPG's do mess up, sometimes egregiously so, but if they're right 90%, 80%, or even 70% of the time, they're still more accurate than random untrained, inexpert individuals, although they'll never match the reliability that comes with experience, a deep and arcane knowledge, and a true passion for a given coin series.

What I mean is that CAC is popular (and adds a premium) because it takes a tedious task (cherrypicking for quality) and makes it much easier. (That's not, in and of itself, a bad thing!) Many people are gladly willing to pay extra for precisely that reason; I have done so myself on many occasions.

I buy 99.9% of my coins online, due to the absence of a local coin shop within 40 miles. I have quite a few CAC coins, as well, because they do offer some level of assurance that the coin in the holder is reasonably accurately graded. Looking through 10,000 ebay listings a day gets old, quickly.

Basically, my point is that if you know that a large % of old coins have already been cleaned by someone at some point in time, noting that they're cleaned is somewhat a case of stating the obvious. It's the extent and outcome of that cleaning that determines a "details" grade or a full grade.

(It wasn't that long ago that toning was considered a defect in the eyes of many, and toned coins were not desirable; if TPG's had existed back then, we'd have been complaining that they were giving full grades to coins that "should be details" because they had toning.)