Major TPG Grading Standards (PCGS NGC ANACS)

No we don't and we can't make any sense of it! That's probably the most accurate response I can provide to your question.

As a collecting community we would appreciate consistency in the process. Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately) they employ humans to do this task. They are seasoned professionals, but everyone has their off day, or they are subject to external influences. It's all subjective when their mood or externals affect the outcome. This is reality and explains why some coins are loved; some dealers get a pass; or a particular day of the week is the best to get the highest grade.

In a perfect world they would be objective every day and with every coin. Viewing the results confirms this is not the case.

SeatedNut is right, there is very little consistency when it comes to grading, especially when it comes to higher graded coins. We'll use Silver Eagles as an example. Finding a common date MS-70 ASE is fairly easy and it won't cost you all that much money. Now we take the key date, 1995-W and you'll be hard pressed to find one graded MS-70 (a roughly $10,000 coin). One graded 69 won't be too difficult and it costs around $3,200 for the coin.

There are a lot of theories as to why that is; keeping the population low to make that grade an ultra-rarity, whether or not the company has a 'Arm's Length Policy', being paid off to grade a certain grade, etc.

Then you also get cases where it's a coin that isn't super rare, and the difference of one point from one particular grade to another is, say, $75. If you sent that coin in 5 times to the same TPG, I guarantee you'll get at least 2 different, possibly 3 different results. I've talked to someone who used to grade coins at a coin show and he told me himself how little things like being tired have affected his gradings.

I could go on and on and get more into it, but there's really just so much that goes on, simply because it's more of a politics and luck game than a coin collecting hobby when TPG's get involved. That's why it's important for us coin collectors to get involved with each other and learn about coins through each other so we can make smart purchases.

Dom I tend to agree with that assessment from my experiences so far. I'm not an expert on grading, but I sent a coin in that looked amazing and I was sure it was perfect. Came back a 68, next day I see some coins at a store that were slabbed as 70s and from the label looked like they came out of a large lot early on and theres just no way someone could say there was more eye appeal to that coin than the one I sent in.

I sent it in the cheapest slowest service which has left me wondering if I would have gotten a more favorable grade with a more expensive quicker grading time to encourage people to use that instead.

venom very true. Gotta have the fingers crossed you catch them on a happy day.

Ive pretty much come to the conclusion thats its cheaper and easier to build a perfect set for the newer coins just buying already slabbed