Tips On Grading Coins For Lowest Cost Possible Through PCGS.

As far as how dealers do it, depends who you're buying from. The big boys that do tons of business get much cheaper grading fees with their massive submissions. They also sell things for what the market will bear so if the price goes down they generally have to adjust as they don't just want to sit on tons of inventory that isn't moving. That's a whole longer conversation though.

As far as how you can get your coins graded cheaper, the key is larger submissions. The shipping and handling charge there's nothing you can do about it. The more coins in the submission the more those costs are spread out over multiple coins and larger submissions can get the cost down to a couple dollars a coin whereas one or two coins you're looking at $20 plus per coin for that. Generally it would only be worth submitting a single coin or two coins if they are worthy of the express tier or the top end of the regular tier. Economy or modern tiers its better to wait until you have more coins if you are in no rush to spread the costs more.

Selecting the right tier is key too. For your 2019 W cent the grading fee is 16 for the modern tier ($21 if you wanted the gold shield service for the TruView as well) so if you're looking at $40+ a coin in total costs for a submission like that you just aren't sending a big enough submission. Same would be true for an economy level submission which is $22 a coin for grading or $27 for gold shield service/world coins. If you get you submission at 10 coins or more your shipping and handling charges drop down to more like $4 dollars or less a coin as opposed to getting hit with the full charge on one coin.

You should be at like 2-3 dollars per coin for the shipping and handling charges with a submission of 20 if the total value is under $5000

Just one of my many thoughts that I haven't yet had to time to fully explore....

Has anyone built a price compare chart between PCGS, NGC, and the other TPGs that are out there. I've had a few real bombs that I sent into PCGS that I paid $35 + shipping only to discover my coin is worth $1. Mostly with dimes or nickels seeking full bands or full steps and didn't get it. Wondering if it would be worth going with a lower named TPG and if you get back one of your coins that appears to be a rock star, send that one into PCGS and pay for cross-over consideration. With that, your rock star coin gets PCGS slabbed.

PCGS slabbed coins appear to be more desirable for those who are selling and asking top dollar.

PCGS and NGC are pretty much on par with each other price wise and in some instances PCGS is cheaper when you consider that NGC charges $5 a coin extra for a scratch resistant slab while the standard PCGS slab is scratch resistant.

The one area NGC is significantly cheaper is 1955-1964 world coins. PCGS is $27 for the world economy tier and their modern starts with 1965 where NGC's modern starts at 1955 so you can get those graded for $17. Hopefully PCGS will reconsider the gap. Conversely for the coins that do quality for the PCGS world modern tier PCGS is a dollar cheaper per coin or $6 dollars cheaper per coin if you wanted the NGC scratch resistant slab. If I remember right PCGS return shipping costs are a little cheaper now than NGCs and I know for sure PCGS uses priority/express mail instead of registered so you get it back MUCH faster when it's done.

As far as sending to lower tier TPGs first, it doesn't really do any good. ANACS can be all over the place with what they give details grades too and just because ANACS or ICG calls something x grade doesn't mean PCGS or NGC will. You can always try a cross over but the success rate for randomly graded things that weren't hand selected is low, probably even very low.

The lower tiers are good for things like cheap Morgans that you want to sell online or low value coins not worth the PCGS/NGC fee, but if something is worth the PCGS or NGC fee it's worth going there the first time. In the long run you'll end up spending more trying to "screen" the coins having them graded at a lower tier TPG first and then cross or crack them out and resubmit them to PCGS than you would just sending them to PCGS the first time.




There's been a lot of posts on that recently in the TPG forum, it's just kind of a lot to retype.