Rare 1574 Paper Siege Coin Severely Damaged By PCGS During Certification

Totally agree with Condor. The prongs put a lot of force on the coin which for a metal coin is no big deal but for a 450 year old coin made out of paper is not good. PCGS should know better.

Seeing as they've been getting away with much more fumbles recently, I highly doubt they will.

Its likely known to most on here I do not put much faith in these systems.

They made their own standards, they don't hold the standards to a science, and I also know I would not be happy paying the fees for their "guarantee" process to be honored.

Let's hope they prove my skepticism wrong this time.

I don't see any scenario where they wouldn't want to see it in hand again before giving compensation.

As for why they don't answer emails it's nothing about records, it's just the sheer volume of them they get most of which are nonsense. They may eventually answer but it'll be a while. There are email address that do respond but the general inquiry one doesn't.

Same reason why I am starting to not trust most TPGs, and that distrust for them isn't shrinking with almost daily threads showing quite large mistakes/unprofessionalism, most seeming to be quite recent as well .

There is a huge difference between market grading and technical grading. Technical grading, though not really a science isn't subjective (well not to the extent of market grading).

And I think its quite disrespectful to assume someone doesn't "understand grading" just because they don't follow the quite inconsistent market grading standards.

I don't think "science" was the best term, but there are certain rules to coin grading that almost every TPG has 'broken'. For example, if a coin has wear, it's not uncirculated. But I have seen many coins with wear get MS grades from TPGs (especially by PCGS and NGC), coins with significant damage and/or cleaning getting straight graded etc etc.

@basebal21


You may be right but I think that PCGS is going to be hard pressed to prove that they need to see it in hand to "prove" that they caused the damage with all of the evidence that I have provided. What I have provided to PCGS should be more than enough to prove that the damage was caused by them and that I am due compensation for the damage.

For the moment this is only an insurance issue in that my insured (declared value $1000.00, so the item should have been insured for $1000.00 while at PCGS) property was severely damaged while in care of PCGS. I feel that I am due monetary compensation for the damage (PCGS will most likely not even have to cover the payout of the compensation, it will be paid out by their insurance company). And to my knowledge there is no California Statute that states that I must allow a company to inspect the damaged property in hand to receive an insurance payout, photos should suffice and I have provided many photos from many angles.

The longer this issue continues without an acceptable solution the more it will become a Public Relations and a reputation issue for PCGS rather than only an insurance issue. Most of PCGS's business model is based on their good reputation. The coin they damaged here is not just some modern coin that can easily be replaced. It is a rather rare and important piece of numismatic world history that is very hard to replace. Seeing this kind of severe damage done to a rare coin like this tends to really resonate with collectors and really makes PCGS look bad in this scenario.

Now, things could go one of two ways. One way is that PCGS could do the right thing and compensate me for the damage (where I keep the coin) and I will consider this issue closed and file it under the category of unfortunate things happen.

The other way, is that PCGS could fight for the coin back and deny me just compensation and I will be posting this story on many more forums and will continue to raise this issue for a long time to come, which is the point where this becomes a Public Relations issue.