Difficulty Of Using Grading Services

Nowadays the business world, sadly, tends/cannot run anymore on the concept that helped us at one time to have the best economy the world had ever seen. It was the mindset of giving quality service at a cost the buyer perceives as a good bargain. "Mom and Pops" tend to do this still. The change was forced into being most concerned about maximization of profit and minimization of work/service.

The coercion to this mindset has been due to regulations and requirements imposed by government demanding expensive changes, such as the coercion requiring major health care cost increases per hired employee etc.


Businesses also really have to watch their backs over liability nowadays. And that gets expensive. But this is also not always their fault. Judges award ridiculous amounts over lack of personal responsibilty and the insurance companies have to make more regulations, and raise costs, just to offer their services. Sadly it is to the point they also are about maximization of profits to cut corners wherever they can also.

Welcome to economics in the 2000s. The greed is not just with the companies as is so often touted by media-smearing of the system that made America great - Capitalism. Businesses have to meet their expenses. Each company is different and has different standards they stick to. But overall this is the current trend we see.

A few options. Join the ANA and you have access to NGC at a reasonable level. ANACS is very easy to deal withal well.

I agree with Conder - it's basic economics and the basics of what is called - in Operations Research - a flow shop.

The most constrained part of the TPG world is grader time. You can easily buy another sonic sealing machine. We've seen photos from Charmy's tour of NGC's photography shop - easy to add another workstation and a $1000 camera/lens combo.

But it takes YEARS to train a grader. And they have to live close enough to come into work each day (coin grading really isn't a WFH via email biz). So no matter how much capacity you have in other areas of the shop, the need for 2 or 3 graders to look at each coin, the time per coin and the number of work hours per day and the number of graders available limits what you can produce.

So you set your fees (this is the basic economics part) to cover your costs at that rate (marginal revenue = marginal cost). If you charge more, you are charging monopoly rents.

The rest is left as an exercise for the reader...

PS: The difference between a 'job shop' and a 'flow shop' is that in a job shop, each job is essentially unique. It may use the same set of machines, and be executed multiple times. Think of a Kinko's. Each order uses some or all of the same set of machines, but is different in the number of copies to be made, whether they are loose, stapled, bound, with covers, without covers, etc. Vs. a flow shop where the same sets of operations are done each time... the modeling of the two is very similar, but you have to account for setup time (which can be zero!).

And the lines can blur - which type is an Automobile assembly plant? Each individual car may be effectively unique (lot size of 1), but that uniqueness is handled outside of the main assembly line so placing whichever pre-assembled dashboard in the frame is the same basic operation even if the dashboard assembly itself is unique.

We're talking about the top grading services in the world, not basement slabbers. TPG precisely IS, "a professional service carried out by experts". The prices, while not cheap, are in no way out of line for the coins that are "supposed" to be slabbed professionally. Nice , inexpensive plastic holders have always been available for those want to protect their coins without certification.

Coins are a big business. Most coins are essentially commodities. To buy and sell a commodity, you need a widely accepted definition of what it is - and thus the slab.

It's just that simple.