Comparing Grading Companies

Hi Trooper,
Several years back Coin World published a study. Someone assembled a group of maybe 10 coins and over the course of nearly 1 year they sent the whole group out to 8 different TPGs. Each time they recorded the assigned grades, cracked out the coins, and submitted them raw to the next candidate. The companies as I recall were PCGS, NGC, ICG, ANACS, PCI, SEGS, Accugrade, and one other. The author developed a special value scale for the assigned grades, calculated the average result for each coin, and did a statistical analysis for each company. His analysis determine whether the grades assigned by each company were higher (generous grading) or lower (conservative grading) compared to the average. He also calculated a scatter value which indicates whether each company was consistent in grading, or whether their grades would vary from generous to conservative.

The results were quite interesting. As I recall PCGS was the most conservative but was pretty inconsistent. NGC was nearly as conservative but significantly more consistent. Accugrade was both inconsistent and generous. The surprise winner was SEGS which was almost as conservative as PCGS and beat both PCGS and NGC in terms of consistency.

The author obviously spent a fair amount of money getting all these coins graded over and over. I don't know whether Coin World subsidized the project. I would love to see a similar project performed. Any volunteers?

Great responses, both of you. And yes I am very surprised by the SEGS results. I've always stayed away from them, believing them to be a somewhere between boiler room and and reputable. One of my dealers showed me a SEGS Shield nickel which we all agreed was a nice AU. It was marked MS-63. I'm willing to give them another look.

I see points on both sides of the hardliners, those who insist on buying raw and those who insist on certified.

For coins less than $300 I'm happy to purchase raw (in person) from a dealer I know and trust. For buying on the internet and for high end coins I always "buy the coin AND the slab", as per my signature. They must be certified by one of the big four AND I must agree with the grade and be satisfied with the eye appeal. That severely limits my choices but in the end I at least get the warm fuzzy.

Condor, no he didn't. But he did tell me "that's typical" (from his experience) and I take him at his word. I'm not saying he's the holy grail or anything but he has been around a while. Different people have different perceptions, I guess.

Call me a follower, but I just don't get the same warm fuzzy with SEGS as I do with the big four. I'm half decent at grading coins, and if need be, I can always reference lots of photos on Heritage. But things like counterfeits or subtle cleaning, I suck at detecting.