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 Replies: 30 / Views: 4,827 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7375 Posts |
Is there a way to combine the coins sent to a TPG to get the highest/fairest grades possible? Making the assumption that the same grader gets all coins in my order. As a new customer I recently shipped 2 coins to ANACS. One was a details grade coin, and the other was a clean grade. Both fairly valuable, $500 or so, each. The details grade came back as expected. To my pleasant surprise the other graded higher than expected. Maybe 10 pts, but definitely 5 pts higher. Was trying to figure out why, and had the thought that unconsciously (I said UNconsciously) the grader felt bad about the details grade, and looked more favorably at the clean one. IOW poorer coin makes better coin look even better. Granted it's not optimum to have a coin overgraded, and I'd be happy with the correct grade. But certainly don't want it undergraded, and who isn't pleasantly surprised if the coin comes back better than expected. Were they just nice to me as a new customer? Just food for thought. Have a much better coin that needs to be graded, and trying to plan my PCGS strategy next. Is an interesting point being raised, or just too much thinking?  Anybody have their own strategy? Jedi mind stuff, etc.  Ed |
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Bedrock of the Community
13014 Posts |
Too much thinking in all honesty. Theres no magical trick to it and theres many different theories like having a lesser "set up coin" so that the others look better by comparison. Other theories are best coin first, best coin last, dont mix and match circulated and ms coins. If there was a secret to it those who knew would likely keep it to themselves. You can work through it logically to some extent over what would make certain things look worse if you were going through a pile of coins. Like dont put circulated seated or bust halfs after a pile of high grade Walkers. Everyone seems to have their own little tricks. No matter what you do though when the time comes that coins going to need to be able to stand on its two feet. I guess you could always try sending cookies with them or taping a 20 to the coin flip  |
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Moderator
 United States
23522 Posts |
The key to being a successful professional grader is not being good at grading, it's being good at grading fast. Many of us are good enough to grade for a TPG but very darn few can do it in the seconds allowed at the Pro level. It's an assembly-line process, with no time available for philosophizing about the individual customer. |
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
7375 Posts |
I didn't realize the grading process was that fast. How much time do you estimate on average they spend with a coin? .....reminds me of a story my father told me about someone who just got a job at Amazon filling orders. Nice cushy job right. They literally run back and forth in the warehouse filling orders. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1839 Posts |
I think the average is like 30 seconds or something like that. There's some videos somewhere, probably on youtube that will show you the grading process and both NGC and one at PCGS I think. Anyway, I think you'll get a better idea of just how little time they take looking at individual coins on average.
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Moderator
United States
23522 Posts |
Quote:
How much time do you estimate on average they spend with a coin? One pretty well-informed speculation on the PCGS Forum a few years back was six seconds apiece. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3453 Posts |
Tbone, I saw a special on coinage where they made grading sound so kumbaya-ish, hubby and I were in hysterics. edweather, what if the good coin was graded first? Call me a cynic, I don't think they put that much thought into it unless it is something extremely special (and even then, market grading comes into play...is that really grading?). I would imagine you would have incredible image memory to stay employed at a TPG. What SsuperDdave said: Quote:
The key to being a successful professional grader is not being good at grading, it's being good at grading fast What I first saw: Quote:
The key to being a successful professional grader is not being good at grading. |
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
1949 Posts |
If the average grading time is 6 seconds, and they are charging $20-30 a coin, they graders are generating $200 a minute in revenue... Seems like a pretty good business model to me :)
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7375 Posts |
I had no idea they spent so little time with a coin. That actually makes me feel better....THINK LONG THINK WRONG. CoinsKelly...I just figured they were a very orderly type place, and that coins were probably taken in the exact order they were listed, but I don't really know  |
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Valued Member
Australia
315 Posts |
I think 6 seconds is a bit of a ridiculous statement as there is so many things they have to look at as well as verifying that a coin is authentic.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10045 Posts |
"6 seconds" of their time...and they're charging how much for their service?  Broken down into seconds, a top lawyer doesn't make that much. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
I think it is closer to 20 to 30 seconds. If each grader does about a thousand coins a day, in an eight hour shift there are just under 29,000 seconds so about 29 seconds per coin. And in those 29 seconds he has to remove the coin from the box, scan the barcode, remove the coin from the flip, grade the coin, put the coin back into the flip, enter the grade into the computer, and put the flip into the finished box. Quote:
there is so many things they have to look at as well as verifying that a coin is authentic. You really think the grader is doing anything more for authentication than "looks good to me"? Believe me I'm sure they don't doany real authentication tests unless it DOESN'T look good to someone. Of course when you have looked at as many genuine coins as these people have, if they get a feeling that something is wrong, it probably is. There are many people who will swear by the idea of using "set up" coins, or that having the coins in a certain order improves the chances of getting a better grade. The problem is there is no way to test to see if they are right. Edited by Conder101
02/01/2014 09:48 am
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1949 Posts |
Just out of compulsion for organization, I always submit mine by country, denomination and date... I feel though that it generally ends up that everything will in an entire batch will either be right where you expected it most of the time, and every once in a while it seems to me they were very strict on the entire batch, and every once in a blue moon, they were will be fairly generous with their grades. Overall though, I feel they are remarkably consistent considering...
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Moderator
United States
23522 Posts |
Keep in mind, though, they "anonymize" submissions prior to the graders getting their hands on them, and I imagine certain issues get "specialist" graders.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1949 Posts |
I've always assumed that, I feel like PCGS for example more than likely has a handful of graders who specialize in world, and then from there some who are experts in certain countries? Or are all graders expected to be capable to grade any series, any country at any given time?
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10045 Posts |
Quote:
...there some who are experts in certain countries? Or are all graders expected to be capable to grade any series, any country at any given time? As the TPGs break more into the 'world coin' market, let's hope they have specialists in specific regions. Take for example, the as-struck grades of coins from 18th C. Austria to those from Scandinavia. There is little if any grade correlation between these two regions. What passes as a quick-glance "VF-20" may be wildly inaccurate; one must figure-in (from actual experience) a typical strike for each type, sometimes even taking die pairs into consideration. Graders will also need to know enough to tell from modern fakes. Additionally, world collectors often use the grading scale used by collectors in that country. I don't use the Sheldon 70-point scale on my 17-18th C. coins from Norway. The collector is still king!  So I suspect the TPGs will get the most traction by focusing on world coins from the mid-19th C. onwards--when die-making and striking became more mechanized and consistent. I could easily see the crown-sized silver coins and gold coins from this period getting slabbed. As for the rest, that's a much more specialized game. Edited by DVCollector
02/01/2014 4:24 pm
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Replies: 30 / Views: 4,827 |
Posted 01/31/2014 08:00 am
