Has Anyone Noticed How Conservative ANACS Has Gotten?

I see it now Tim. Didn't see that.

If ANACS is overly conservative, I would think buying them would get you some great deals.

Right Now and Not Later Wow!!
"recolored, bent, cleaned, or suffering from "counting wheel marks", that have successfully crossed-over to NGC"!!
If you could identify these coins in an NGC holder as having these problems would you buy them for your collection?..

"buy the coin not the holder"

I think you would be able to get some great coins from them. If they're grading more stringent, then the coins at the same grade (as another TPC) will have nicer details and they don't seem to sell for as much. Better over all deal then? I might have to start looking at them more.

That nickel - You can get a coroded grade for that little spec between the feathers? Is that common?

Aunuggets...and I totally agree..I just hope more can see it for what it is, but can tell you I've already heard comments like "Don't send to A****, you can get a better grade from ****....that alone should make people stop and think, but I'm afraid money seems to be the determining factor. If we truly want the hobby to grow and gain respect, that train of thought will have to change.

Posted this on another thread, but seems appropriate here too:
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From a buyer's standpoint, I would always opt for the more conservative service "as a general rule". You still have to make your final decisions based on the coin alone. But as far as the different services being consistent, the only 100% degree of consistency would have to be applied to the same coin being graded multiple times, because there is no consistency in the coins themselves. You will NEVER find two Morgan dollars for instance with "exactly" the same bag marks, toning, luster, degree of strike, etc. etc. Sure, there are similarities that all come into play in the final grade ("final" being used loosely), but to offer up an example..... A few years back, I had a nice Morgan dollar that had a very clean "apple cheek" in one service's MS63 holder that I cracked out and sent to another service. It came back MS65. Awhile later, after the obvious industry "grade creep" had set in, I cracked it again and resubmitted it to the first TPG, where it was graded MS66. The same coin now resides in an MS67 holder with the second mentioned TPG. When you watch the industry (that's what TPG really is) over a long enough period of time, you see the grade creep problem very well, not so much if you are dealing on shorter time intervals or just recently entering the hobby.

Before we jump to conclusions about "skewed perspectives" in grading, it's important to take into consideration the motives involved. My personal feeling is that ANACS is the most conservative and OBJECTIVE of the major 4 TPGS, based not only on their years of experience, but on the fact that they tend to be less commercialized. Let's face it, the "Join The Club" operations of PCGS and NGC are more marketing and profit driven than anything else. That could also tend to be viewed as "skewed perspective" in that certain services might "grade to the owner" and not to the coin. There can be little doubt such practices are occurring where the major submitters are concerned. But all are trying to convince you that theirs is "the best", with whatever gimmick happens to be in vogue at the time. Too much fluff, and not enough concentration on the coin.........

The way I see it, if a coin buyer is looking for conservative grading rather than hype and popularity of the plastic involved, they will make their own determinations as to which service offers what they are looking for. If ANACS continues their conservative approach, and more and more coin buyers understand that they are likely to get a better coin relative to the grades of other TPGs, business will gravitate toward ANACS, other collectors will take notice, and dealers will follow suit when customers start demanding more conservative grading across the board. All of the grading services have had problems in the past, and "grade creep" has been a hobby-wide concern. Some of the crap I see in slabs and the grades given by the "top grading services" these days makes my stomach turn when I look back to the days of what coin grading use to represent. 99.5 percent of what you see is mass-market common junk, while a few gems still lay unnoticed in their pure "raw" state if you take the time to look.

liveandievarieties said (referring to PCGS and NGC) ....... "Yes, when the companies first began they were strict. They've now redefined modern grading", it makes me think of INFLATION of the money supply, and the fact that the populace is being stolen blind while they sit in an semi-conscious stupor watching sitcoms and the nightly propaganda they refer to as News. If they were strict at first, then the obvious question is WHY AREN'T THEY STILL ? "Redefined modern grading" ? Where is the consistency in that ? Grade Creep in the coin industry has had the same effect as monetary inflation, and will continue to have the same effect until more conservative and strict standards are returned to across all services. Imagine every grading service and slab with its attached grade were to vanish overnight, leaving only the coins behind. This hobby would collapse on a moments notice, simply because of the dependency it has developed on something other than the underlying coins. Can you imagine "sight-unseen" trading of raw coins between unfamiliar buyers ? Why then should slabbed coins be traded any differently ?

Any TPG is going to be fallible, that is just a fact of life, and it's unreasonable to ever expect otherwise. An isolated issue here and there is not an accurate indicator of any service as a whole. For me, I will be paying alot more attention to ANACS in the future simply because of their increasingly conservative grading policies as opposed to new holders, different colors of placards, neat little alphanumeric notations on the plastic, laser scanning, or whatever the next best thing gimmick is. But I will always make my own determination of grade, value, and desirability based on the coin itself.

Grading creep comes from the same source as ridiculous baseball card prices. Every month, Beckett came out with a new price guide, covering the same cards as last month's guide.

If they repeated the prices from last month, there would be no reason to buy a new price guide, so every month, lots of prices got raised, so you needed the new guide to keep up.

And every month, dealers would busily raise the prices on their stock, so they wouldn't get $10 for a card now "worth" $12. None of them asked themselves the point of putting a $12 price tag on a card that no one wanted at $10, and should have been repriced at $8.

Look at the tpgs, publicly owned corporations that have to keep stockholders happy every quarter. They've already slobbed most of the rare coins that needed authenticated, they either have to start ruining the paper money, world coins, or other markets, or give people an excuse to crack out their old coins and hope for a higher grade/price.

Another cause of grade creep is probably inexperienced graders.

One day, I was in a shop that's been around longer than mine. The owner wanted to show me some "really nice" coins he had bought. Oh, goody! He brought out a handful of AU common date walkers, with average luster and toning. I'm sure I looked at him funny, as he was really pleased with them. Sorry, but I've seen original gems with marvelous luster, back when you could buy them for $3-5 each.

I'm speculating that since the really nice stuff was taken out of the market by collectors years ago, what the graders see today is lower grade stuff, hoary crackouts for the fifth try at a better grade, and stuff hardly worth grading, like bullion coins, when they actually get a nice coin, they tend to overgrade it simply because it's so much better than most of what they see. In reality, it's the way LOTS of coins used to look.

My biggest beef with ANACS and their grading of Canadian coins is that they will grade coins removed from PL sets as MS,they use US grading standards for PL coins,CAVEAT EMPTOR.NGC and PCGS will grade coins removed from PL sets with the proper designation.
I don't believe ANACS is any better at grading Canadian coins than NGC or PCGS.I think all three have tightened up their standards for Canadian Coins lately.Very important to "buy the coin not the holder" when buying coins graded by any of the three.
Ugly is right,when you compare apples to apples,ANACS graded coins usually sell for less.I too buy them and free them from their holders.
My opinion