TPG Assessment

And No- this has nothing to do with a master die. Die polishing is a practice used by the Mint on individual production dies. It obliterates blemishes such as clashes and at least theoretically, prolongs die life.

When the face of a working die is polished, it simply reduces the "face", and reduces the height of the devices on the finished coin, or the depth of the devices on the working die (opposite effect). Very seldom will you see a "spot polish" done on a working die. They are polished across the entire surface. A spot polish would result in a depression on the die below the normal field, which in turn would result in a raised area on the finished coin.

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.

Wow AuNuggets...you and I think a lot alike on more than one level...but here is the link...and thanks for your time ! https://goccf.com/t/82581

AuNuggets...you found my 95 the 97 is in question and the link above is the correct coin

The coin in question has missing hair in the bust device, but everything else looks sharp, actually sharper than the comparison coin.

This is not the effect of an overpolished die....... just foreign matter (again) that has adhered to the die at the point of the missing hair. In simple terms, the foreign matter filled up the space where the hair "should" have been. You will see this alot on missing letter and missing mintmark coins. Just a little matter filling up the space where the metal was intended to flow. Look at how sharp the lines are around the area of the missing hair. This is usually a good indicator that you are dealing with a filled die. If the detail had simply been polished away, there would be more "softening" and "averaging" into the bust design.

Just for the sake of argument though, there is also a "ghost image" at that point on the coin extending out into the flat face of the coin design. While having the same effect, there could have been a piece of foreign matter stuck to either the die or the blank at the time of striking that later either fell off, or remained adhered to the die.

My opinion anyway

I'm not an expert by any means, just been playing with coins since I was 7 or 8 years old. Always had a fascination with them. Semi-retired myself, so I enjoy the forums now too about as much as the actual collecting activities. There is always something new to learn. Things would get boring pretty fast otherwise.