(Paging Conder101): Question About Acg CA Slab

I'm obviously not Conder101 but I don't think that is an ACG slab. It looks like a basement slab that someone happened to label as "ACCUGRADE" partly because no Trademark symbol is present. Conder101 will likely know for sure.

I just received Alan Hager's book on Saturday. The one on grading Morgan and Peace dollars, haven't had a chance to look through it yet, was purchased for the Library, he wrote it when Accugrade was fairly new as I recall. I can look through it later at home, to see if there is any photos or discussion on his grading company in it.

Founded in 1984 by Alan Hager, ACG was the first company to slab coins in a hard plastic capsule WITH an alpha-numeric grade. Originally using photoslabs, ACG switched to a smaller size slab without a photo around 1986.

That IS an ACG slabbed coin. ACG began in 1984 and in 1986 opened branch offices in California and Iowa. The Iowa branch was not open for very long. The California office was run by Randy Camper and was open for at least two or three years and moved at least twice during that period. The California office slabs come with four different reverse labels One with the address of the San Francisco office, one with the address of the Long Beach Office, One that simply says Accugrade California, and one that just says Accugrade WEST. All of the California slabs are scarce, the San Francisco being the most common of the four.

The San Francisco label is as far as I can tell the first of the four from around 1986. It is cataloged as ACG 9.

The reason ACG stopped grading for awhile at the end of the 80's because of a licensing deal, according to them. They had licensed their slabbing technology to another company and according to the terms of the agreement they had to stop slabbing coins. An non-competition clause. (ACG says the other company was PCGS, PCGS denies this. I haven't seen the contract so I don't know who is telling the truth.)

In 1991 Accugrade tried to return to slabbing under their ASA trademark that they used for their sportscard slabbing service. They were called on it and held in violation of their non-competition clause and they had to cease slabbing again. ASA slabs are very scarce.

In 2000 the clause expired and Accugrade could once again compete and slab coins. From that point one they now have ASA-Accugrade on the reverse label.

Hope that answered your question.

The Connecticut , Iowa, and California offices were all open at the same time, with Connecticut being the head office.

The Florida office was opened in 2000 when ASA-accugrade returned to slabbing, Alan Hager having moved there in the meantime. A few years ago the Florida office close and Accugrade moved to Canada where they now appear to grade only Canadian and very few of those. I have seen only a couple slabbed under their own name and one that appeared to have been a joint operation between Accugrade and ICCS. I find that piece questionable though.

Iowa


Connecticut