School Me On Cac, PQ And + Designations On Slabs

I think you can look at it as these notations denote a specimen that is in the upper level for each grade; an exquisite specimen for a specific grade, if you will. For example, a slabbed coin graded as MS64 with a CAC sticker would be like saying that it is at the very top of the MS64 grade and is one of the "choice" specimens for that grade (rather than a borderline coin that barely squeaked into that grade or just simply an average MS64 coin). With that said, it kind of seems funny, kind of like somebody grading a grader. I think the point scale is fine and has enough grades to be specific enough, but obviously some people want to know within a grade if that coin is at the upper end of the grade or not. A coin with a CAC sticker or with a "+" grade or similar notation might command a bit of a premium in most cases too. Overall they are just ways to ensure that you are getting a quality coin for that grade as judged by a third party. If you want to play devil's advocate you could say they are also simply another way to produce revenue for these companies from coins that are already graded.

CAC's website says that their sticker means a coin is either "hi-end" for the grade or "solid" for the grade the TPG has chosen. I mentioned in a recent post that as of 2010 ( they started in 2007 ) they say that about 47% of submissions had earned a sticker.

Spaceace is wrong above when he says they designate "top" or "choice". Some dealers claim that in ads, but it isn't true by their own admissions. It only designates they aren't low-end. But since they don't publish %'s a term like "solid" is quite nebulous and could include "average" as easily as not. I don't claim to be an expert at grading, but if you lined up 10 coins of the same grade and asked me which 1 was cac-worthy I'd bet I'd choose the wrong one the vast majority of times. I don't find cac-ed ones to be of any higher quality than non-cac-ed coins personally. And since you have no way to know if a non-cac-ed coin has ever been submitted to them ( thus failed to pass their "tests"/re-grading standards ), it all seems like a con to me. They tend to command a bump in price on the market though which makes me dislike the whole idea. Dealers add the cost of submittal/s&h and stickering onto the coin and bump it anywhere from $25 to $100 from what I've seen. Ssup is probably correct that it's internal intent is to allow dealers to know the coin is NOT LOW-END so they can buy and sell to each other sight-unseen. But to me that is crazy anyway. The eye-pop/look of a coin is very important to me. It is bad enough that the majority of my buys have to be from pics - to buy a coin without even seeing pics of it just strikes me as completely bizzarro.

The "+" would seem to indicate a coin is better than most at that grade but not up to the next grade level in technical merit. Does it mean "top 5% or 10%"? Though they do tend not to designate a high % of submittals as "+" it is really not well defined. What I do know is that PCGS uses a .5 level grade more when evaluating "+" coins versus non-"+" in registry set numerical comparisons. So they deem it a half grade better numerically ( a 66 gets 66 points and a 66+ gets 66.5 points IOW). That doesn't mean the estimated value is half-way between the grades though at all - in theory or practice.

PCGS does not use the * and I really don't care to even speculate on what NGC means by it. PQ is one dealer's answer to CAC to designate Premium Quality. But none of these things is well defined or explained. Certainly not in any statistical or numerical fashion ( which is what I'd like to see like that a gold bean means top 1%, instead of that it means it is under-graded, and a green one means it is top 10% for the grade - instead of nebulous "solid or hi-end"). I think they all intentionally let them be nebulous as if that builds intrigue and more interest.

Just my humble opinion!

Thank you very much for the insight. Y'all have pretty much confirmed what I was guessing, but I wanted to know for sure. If the TPG's could put the same grade on a coin each time it went through to them, then I could perhaps see people getting finer with it, but this just seems like people splitting hairs to me. I'm thinking if I need a sticker to tell me if a coin looks good for the grade, then perhaps I need to do more looking at coins.



I would say this is a 4th party. :)

Also, a side question- that I feel kinda stupid for asking but I dont deal too much in old pcgs holders is... what is the meaning of the Series XX & Coin XX numbers?