It's Time To Stop Purchasing Raw Coins From Local Coin Shops

Seems industry standard to overgrade coins a bit when selling. Imo you didn't do too bad. Yes your coins came back a bit under the grade on the 2x2, but none of them were "details." I just assume all LCS coins are over graded, and that just gives me a starting point to arrive at my own grade. Heck, not only overgraded, but usually overpriced too :-/

Learn how to grade so you don't rely on the dealer's grades. Nearly every dealer overgrades their coins, so you need to learn how to grade so you can tell what a fair price is.

Depending on grades from dealers is a slippery slope. About 7 years I was buying MS Morgans from a dealer and filling an album. I decided to get the coins graded by NGC. The dealer grades were mostly accurate on the common dates, but each better date sold to me as a MS 62 or MS 63 was in fact a 58. It was no error on the dealers part as all my better dates came back as 58. The lessons I learned was not to trust the seller's grades and how to tell circulation rub on a brilliant Morgan and buy slabs on expenisive coins. As noted above do your own grading. I see no reason to stop buying from dealers if the price is right and I like the coin.

jdmern:



I'm not talking about lowballing at all. That's a strategy a dealer would use. I'm not a dealer, I'm a collector. And, there is no way I would pay a dealer 50% over FMV for a typical coin.

If you're not sure what FMV is for your stuff, you can check the listings on http://www.coinprices.org/ or https://www.bestcoin.com/ and auction sites like HA and ebay for recent results. That's what I do. Sure, there's variations based on eye appeal, scarcity of variety, or even prior ownership but, for typical coins at a set grade, the price range is pretty narrow.

How a dealer seems to make money is by lowballing when buying, both by undergrading and underpaying, and then by overgrading and overpricing, when selling. And, I don't mean an acceptable 10-25% markup. I'm talking 50%. That's been my experience.

If you can get a particular price for something you have, by all means do it. I would do it, too.

In general what you have described does happen a lot and a lot more than most people realize. It's not always something that is shady though, honestly a lot of dealers can't really grade all that well but there are plenty who do that intentionally and plenty that crack out problem coins or boarderline coins that they know they could sell for more raw.

There are good shops out there, but in my experience there's more shady ones than great ones.




Not for grading differences since it's an art not a science. In the end they are held accountable as they generally lose customers quickly once they figure it out

As Baseball said, TPG grading is not an exact science, but, as they proclaim, an art.

So who is "right," the local or the TPG?

Consider:
1. NGC, ANACS, and PCGS each have their own, self-defined standards.
- the same coin is not guaranteed the same grade if cross submitted.
- so who is "right" in this case?
- In fact the same coin resubmitted to the SAME TPG is never guaranteed the same grade.

2. TPGs give courses to "tune" their graders into how their system is set up.
- if your local has not had these courses, then it is unlikely your local dealer will be consistent to any of the differing TPG systems.


The issue at hand might (note that word) be more accurately stated as you dealer is consistently higher in assigning grades than PCGS/NGC/ANACS (whichever one you are referring to).

I agree with Spruett. Learn to grade for yourself.


Now if you enjoy the satisfaction of a label printed with a certain number... go for it and collect that way. But even then, learn to buy the coin and not the label so you don't accidentally get taken by an error.

True - thanks for the clarification.