Question For People Familiar With NGC Population Report

From my friend that founded ICG and worrked for PCGS as a grader for a long time. They had one particular gold rarity that had a population at PCGS alone that was three times larger than the mintage! Now add in NGC, ANACS, PCI, etc. there was no way there actually that many coins in existence. He said the coin in question was a very border line MS64 that seemed to trade owners every few months and would get cracked out and resent back in trying for the MS65 grade, a big, big difference in price several tens of thousands of dollars. He said the coin came through so often the graders always remembered it due to that fact, and a tiny little mark that one time disappeared - that was when the graders learned of the high quality coin doctors out there, the coin had been puttied and it was really deceiving, almost to the point they missed it - if not for the history of that particular piece!

Back in the early years of PCGS they actually paid for returns of their lables to try and keep the pop reports more accurate, I think it was .50/per label if my memory serves me right. Not really why they stopped that practice. IMO it was a good idea.