What Did ANACS Do To Deserve Its Bad Rap?

all TPG grading is suspect to a degree. remember that folks just like us are grading them so there is always room for mistakes. how many time have we seen PCGS and NGC coins that the coin did not match the slab. regardless of which one is grading the coin you still need to assess it yourself. I dont slab for that reason, I trust my grading ability.

i would think that PCGS and NGC have a better reputation in applying more accurate grades overall. maybe its because they have more experienced graders or the process they use to grade a coin so people are willing to pay more for them.

folks are lazy and rely on the slab grade too much instead of taking the time to learn various series nuances and how to grade them. CCF members are every bit as good as the big houses in assessing a coin.

I strongly agree with the point that panzaldi made that
too many collectors rely on the slab grade too much, without taking the time necessary to learn accurate grading for themselves.

If you can accurately grade for yourself, you can be more confident about buying 'raw' coins at lower prices.
And for some, getting them slabbed and selling for a profit, to take advantage of those who haven't taken the time to learn.

some of my thoughts on why anacs is the third wheel of the bunch:

people dont like the way the slabs look. specifically they dont like the yellow insert. I like the shape. its nice to be able to read the slab while its in the slab box.

they historically havent had the same financial guarantee that ngc and PCGS offer. not sure if thats still the case. basically they are just saying stuff. PCGS and ngc are offering a buy back guarantee if the coin is ever determined to be fake.

people like the registry stuff. you cant put anacs slabs into the PCGS/NGC registry. you arent just buying a holder. you also get the software.

anacs cost quite a bit less. most dealers charge more for PCGS because PCGS charges them more. they are passing that cost on to the customer. iterated millions of times that creates a difference in price.

i dont care for slabs, but before they were the industry standard there were a lot more predatory dealers. slabs force a professional standard onto the hobby. the hobby is a safer place for novice and intermediate collectors/dealers with those types of services available.

i also agree that slabs have become a crutch for a lot of people. people treat the word of the graders as fact rather than the opinion of 3 well trained coin nerds. they are just people. many of the graders werent even born when I got into coins.

i look at every coin in PCI and SEGS slabs that I see. there are a lot of good coins in those holders and there are a lot of people who refuse to shop anything other than their preferred brand of plastic holder. they narrow their interaction with the hobby and that is to my benefit.

anacs is as good as the others when it comes to errors and varieties in my experience. nobody on the planet can reliably tell the difference between ms67 and ms 68.

What coinfrog said. Although last few years I feel ANACS has been pretty good if not stricter than PCGS or NGC.

I know we say this all the time, buy the coin not that slab. Look at each coin as a whole. If the coin is nicer in an ANACS slab buy that one. For the majority unless you are competing in the registry set, the slabbed shouldn't matter.

The not as good:

The blue label holder fiasco burned a lot of collectors on ANACS. ANACS blue label holders were wildly inconsistent and damaged the company's reputation with collectors and investors.

When ANACS lost their status as the ANA's preferred grader, that had a negative effect on their reputation as well, because it created a perception that they were "not as good" as NGC or PCGS, whether that was true or not.

To the best of my knowledge, ANACS does not operate or maintain an online database of their coins or a set registry system. Unlike PCGS and NGC, you cannot enter an ANACS slab label number into their website to see images, population, pricing data, and such. Registry Sets have become a big deal for a lot of more advanced collectors over the last few years.

ANACS to the best of my knowledge does not offer imaging services like PCGS TrueView or NGC High Resolution Photography.

CAC does not sticker ANACS holders, and CAC has become a fairly large player in the high-end collector and investor coin market.

The good:

ANA Photo Certificate, ANA small white holder, and ANACS small white holder coins, as well as the newer Yellow Label holders, tend to be fairly consistently graded, or even slightly undergraded in the case of the old white holders. They also offered net grades and split grades, which were very useful, but the practice was not picked up by PCGS or NGC.

ANACS is now in my opinion the industry leader in Morgan VAMs (along with VSS) and will attribute many of the minor VAMs that PCGS and NGC will not bother with.

ANACS recognizes and attributes the Wexler varieties on Lincoln Cents and other coins; and also recognizes and attributes many of the "less notable" Cherrypicker varieties (Fivaz-Stanton) as well as the old Finder varieties, or at least used to, whereas PCGS and NGC would only slab "notable" varieties for many years.

Although NGC is catching up / has caught up now, ANACS authenticated and slabbed many ancient and medieval coins back when the other TPG's were unwilling to do so.

ANACS is more affordable compared to PCGS and NGC, especially on bulk submits, and has faster turnaround times.

That being said, PCGS and NGC owe their position and reputation in the hobby as much to a combination of effective marketing, promotion, and advertising than to a significantly higher quality of grading accuracy in my opinion; they have leveraged deals with major auction houses and prominent collectors, slabbed famous hoards, signed agreements with all sorts of famous and not-so-famous people to put their autographs on label inserts, worked tirelessly to build value in their product (the TPG slab) with dealers and resellers, provided on-site grading and submission at major shows, made big investments in getting their TPG brands promoted in trade magazines and price guides, and so on.

These are not things that are directly related to grading coins, of course, but like most products, perceived value (the "worth" of a brand name) is not always correlated with product quality. The cost of that marketing is passed on to collectors and dealers in the form of increased submission fees, more expensive memberships, etc. In other words, you are paying a premium for the name on the label.

I like to consider ANACS a great choice for budget-minded collectors. You are getting a coin that will be graded at about the same level as PCGS and NGC, but without the "marketing" premiums added into the cost. If you are not concerned about registry sets, photography, or CAC beans, ANACS is a solid option and worth equal consideration. ANACS is also a natural fit for Morgan VAM collectors and modern error/variety collectors as well. The fact that ANACS does not spend a lot of money on marketing is also an advantage for the same reasons of lowered submission cost and faster turnaround times.

As always, buy the coin, not the holder.

What did ANACS do to deserve its bad rap/rep? People said it on the internet. Then people kept repeating it. And in my observation, the loudest voices are fanboys for a particular service (cough cough PCGS cough cough). Maybe it was deserved at a point in time, I have no idea, I judge the coin and not the plastic its in. I don't own a whole lot of slabs but objectively I'd say I disagree with PCGS a lot more than ANACS (or NGC). As a casual observer it almost seems like there's a concerted effort to crush them by the other two and their related players (registry sets, CAC...).

@paralyse has many good points. One correction though - you can verify a cert on ANACS. I don't know how recent that feature is - they do appear to have redone their website since my last visit. Another plus is that they have a presence at a lot of smaller coin shows that the other two can't be bothered with.

Edit: On the guarantee thing, theirs doesn't seem much different than others, with the caveat that it applies to after 2007. https://anacs.com/the-anacs-guarantee/
Their imaging service is $3.

I'm a collector that has occasionally submitted to ANACS when a monthly special aligns with my stars. I digg varieties and the occasional error. Morgan VAMs and EAC or Snow attributions tickle my fancy. ANACS is awesome for this.

In terms of consistency, sometimes I'm left scratching my head, but no more or less than mistakes I see coming out of the bigger guys. NGC/PCGS certainly make some odd calls with EAC and MS Morgans here and there as well with far too many getting "market acceptable" passes too.

As others have said, PCGS/NGC are winning at marketing. But don't let that fool you on a slabbed coin by coin basis.

Always let the coin speak for itself and use your own eye and mind in grading for yourself.

The market needs ANACS.