PCGS Announces "Coin Sniffer" And Lawsuit

I agree with the lawsuit in that there is really no other way to stop people from doing this unless someone with the money and expertise to go after them does so. I guess the difference between this and what someone who overcleans their coins is doing is that these people are intentionally altering details of the coin at a fine level in order to manipulate the grade. Most notably they are adding metal to the coin. You'd never in a million years win a lawsuit against someone cleaning a coin, but altering it in this fashion is a different matter.

I do agree that PCGS is probably doing this in part out of spite because they are mad that it got past their graders. I also agree that TPGs are overrated except for authentication. Not useless for grading, just overrated.

Don't sell the talents of these doctors short. I find it easy to believe that they can do work which is undetectable before years pass, and even then only if the "worked" areas age in a different fashion from the rest of the coin. With that said, the pics of the worked FH SLQ going around in association with this lawsuit are, um, pretty ridiculous.

I have no love for PCGS. In this instance, though, I support them wholeheartedly - they can go a long way towards ridding the hobby of a cancer with this lawsuit by establishing a precedent.

I like it. They may be lashing out in spite as stated, but maybe this will at least help to deter future wannabes that may have been thinking about it.

They say they have "compelling evidence" against the parties involved, but I think that is going to be hard to prove. Besides suing them, how about some jail time?

Even if they don't win the suit, at least these people will know that they are on to.

I wonder where NGC stands in all of this. Do they support PCGS with regards to coin doctoring? I'm sure they do, but haven't heard anything from them about using technology to stop the coin doctors.

Here is something that I've been thinking about. Collectively, PCGS and NGC have graded roughly 40 million coins (more accurately, have graded coins 40 million times since undoubtedly many have been graded more than once). It's hard to guess an average price paid for grading each coin given different rates charged for different services over nearly 25 years. But I will go ahead and take a wild guess of $20 in today's money. So according to my admittedly fuzzy math, collectors (since they are ultimately the ones who bear the costs even though most of the submissions are probably by dealers) have spent about $800 million in grading services. Don't get me wrong, I own a fair amount of slabbed coins and am very happy that they are out there, otherwise we would have even more coin docs and other unscrupulous sellers taking advantage of collectors. I guess my point is simply that $800 million is an expensive insurance premium.

Wow, that was some heavy duty reading.

Interesting that they still have a couple of coins in possession to present to the court as evidence. I'd be upset if I were them, too. Shelling out $90,000 for an altered 1918-D Mercury wouldn't set well with me, either.

Well, here's where it all works in PCGS' favor. They've been busy patenting stuff - they already own the (pretty broad) patent governing computerized coin grading, and they're patenting the processes by which they determine authenticity of surfaces and composition.

NGC is gonna get left out in the cold, from a technology standpoint, unless they can come up with processes which don't step on PCGS' patents.

I feel that people who make fake coins should be tried in court

Well as far as grading go's one would think a solid way to detect doctoring a coin would be to Attribute the coin. NCG will not guarantee their own attributing service,** but they charge you for it **

One would think someone had too take a much harder look at an Attributed coin to verify it.