The Great Ebay CAC Event - October 11th Through The 21st

I can't contend that CAC coins have always been very solid.

I just always thought the entire premise was sort of silly. If TPGs actually did their job correctly in providing accurate grading and proper superlatives to account for appearance differences in similarly graded coins, this wouldn't exist.

I have seen some horrid grading from PCGS and NGC (especially NGC) recently and I think their increased work load is hurting their product. ANACS and ICG are actually closing the gap at this point, but are sometimes wrong as well.

So I guess I'm glad CAC exists as you can't trust ANY TPG sight unseen IMO and CAC comes close, but I just don't understand why it has to be this way.

TPG exist for investors, not collector in general. CAC to me mean second or final level quality control. But without them, there are time that would be hard to sell...

I am waiting for another Entrepreneur grading company to do the same like CAC. Why not! We got 4 TPG excluding the basement slabbers.

The gap is not widening between PCGS/NGC and ANACS/ICG.

If you look at the CDN Certified Coin Market indicator, you'll see that the ratio of premium prices realized using their formula is shrinking between the companies.

Consider that just a few years ago, ICG was essentially unheard of and ANACS had totally fallen from grace from their early years. During those years those two companies offered better pricing and improved service. In the mean time, NGC has put out thousands of garbage "promotional graded" coins with useless designations and fancy holders designed simply to make money for specific dealers and companies. Hard to take them seriously. PCGS, for their part, has pretty much defined "market grading", which has only added to the problem of buying coins sight unseen.

As far as a recent personal anecdote, I just saw an NGC Buffalo nickel with no horn, an incomplete date, and LIBERTY completely merged with the rim. It was a G-6 tops graded by NGC as F-15....a grade which would have had the buyer spend roughly 6 times what they should have paid if they bought it sight unseen. The coin did not have a CAC sticker LOL.

I have said it before...

The tech has been there since the early 90's to have a computer scan the coin and make an evaluation based on programmer input algorithms. I believe the selling point in the future by TPGs is that no matter how careful they were, human error could enter the equation. So "how can you sleep at night " not really knowing if your MS70 is ACTUALLY MS70 - even with a CAC? So send us all your slabbed coins so we can give them a TRUE, UNBIASED grade.

I know one of the TPGs spent a lot of money in the 90s towards getting a computer-based system up and running - but they never implemented it. I would not be surprised if eventually we learn the reason the system was put off is the marketing people were thinking ahead to the day when almost everything of value was slabbed. By waiting to introduce the tech they would guarantee a future business that could keep them working for years until everything was re-slabbed. The way humans are, you can guarantee if high-tech slabs were introduced that people would pay a premium for them.

acloco, if CAC would put stickers on coins stating that the coin does not meet their standards, then, I think, that most people would be afraid to submit their coins to CAC for fear of getting that sticker. After all rejection by CAC means that the coin is at the lower end for the grade. I don't think that I would want that on a coin, especially if I was planning on selling it.

If CAC place any sticker that says NO or rejected with listing of cert #, there would be a lot of investors wanting to get $ reimbursement from either PCGS or NGC, or which dealer it was bought from, (the difference in market value according to these 2 TPG). This can be millions of $ loss.

There will be a big controversial in the numismatic industries on how anyone can ever trust TPG, I am sure everyone know and can imagine where this can lead to!

I actually think acloco's idea would be a good one no matter the problems it caused for the TPG's. If the TPG's were doing their job correctly there would be no need for a service as CAC and if CAC is going to show us which coins do deserve the bean, they should also list the ones that didn't deserve it so the end buyer can buy sight unseen accordingly. I have actually seen one online dealer (can't remember which one now) that listed in their description at least on a couple coins that CAC did not agree that the coin should receive their sticker, which is something I had never seen any other dealer admit. I just figure if they have quite a few CAC stickered coins in their inventory the ones without it didn't meet their requirements