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 Replies: 8 / Views: 1,968 |
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Valued Member
Canada
166 Posts |
Does anyone have a guess at the frequency of totally wrong TPG labels? I don't handle very many coins and mostly Canadian lately, but I have had mislabeled coins from ANACS (a common 1900-H Canadian Cent listed as a rare 1900) NGC (again a 1900-H Canadian cent listed as a 1900) and PCGS (a 1966 Canadian PL dollar I got for $15 listed as MS66,which would be worth a couple of $K, don't I wish it was true). So, it seem to me that such things must happen regularly. The only coin I ever had personally submitted to PCGS was an 1882-S US 2 1/2 dollar gold piece that came back 1882-P. Any other personal stories or a guess at how rare this is? |
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Moderator
 United States
23522 Posts |
Tough call, Steve. I'd characterize it as "vanishingly rare but extremely public when it happens." I read a figure the other day of 12,000 coins per day for NGC (scary when you consider that there's only 20-ish graders), and the implied workload on everyone involved allows for both administrative and grading errors.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
Depends on what you mean by "totally wrong". I wouldn't call missing a mintmark as being totally wrong. That tends to be what they call a "mechanical error" probably caused by a transcription error by the person who typed the information from the submission form into the computer. Worse are errors of identification of varieties,and sometimes attribution when dealing with world coins. These tend to be more errors of competency where they really didn't know what they were looking at. On of the worst I have seen was an NGC slab with a Conder token in it. They had the wrong D&H number, the wrong city, the wrong county, and the wrong edge inscription, even the wrong denomination. The only thing they had right was that it was a Conder token.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10045 Posts |
Quote:
I read a figure the other day of 12,000 coins per day for NGC (scary when you consider that there's only 20-ish graders)  Assuming 25 graders, 12K/day translates to: 480 coins/person daily 60 coins/hour per person (assuming 8 hour day) 1 coin graded/minute I spend more time pondering grades on my coins--or for others here on CCF  |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
1248 Posts |
impossible... all graders would see nothing but coins = coin stare....
perhaps 12,000 per week..?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
968 Posts |
No... 12,000 per day for 20 graders. It was in a Wall Street Journal article last week. I think a major problem in the numismatic world right now is the premiums that coins get (at least in the uncirculated grades) for a single point difference (sometime thousands of dollars). Maybe this would be justified if we had an infallible coin grading computer to make the judgments. But humans looking at over 1 coin per minute are going to be somewhat inconsistent. If I had a coin graded MS-67 I'm not sure that I'd really feel one graded MS-68 is any better or MS-66 is any worse. Maybe they are, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if you sent them all in for a regrade and they swapped places.
I believe we'd be better served with fewer points in the grading system. I think somewhere around 30 or so would be a sweet spot where you have enough grades to differentiate between subtly different coins, while at the same time minimizing the subjectivity of the grader. While 30 is just a guess, I think 70 brings too much potential for human error into the equation.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10045 Posts |
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But humans looking at over 1 coin per minute are going to be somewhat inconsistent. If I had a coin graded MS-67 I'm not sure that I'd really feel one graded MS-68 is any better or MS-66 is any worse. That's a staggering amount of volume, but perhaps they're sharp enough to grade US coins at 1 per minute?  I'm less optimistic towards grading world coins--how can they possibly remember the wear points? Now, given the onset of die-struck fakes, is a mere 1 minute inspection really adequate to detect a good forgery? When fakes can pass a cursory inspection, fake slabs will be superfluous. When this happens, TPGs may become irrelevant too. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
12,000 coins per day for 20 graders would indicate that submissions are DOWN. The figure used to be closer to 1,000 coins per day per grader.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
968 Posts |
When was is 1000 per day per grader for NGC? The WSJ was suggesting record business for graders and the 12,000 per day figure was double what it was last year. I'm not doubting you, just curious about reconciling it with what the article said.
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Replies: 8 / Views: 1,968 |
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Posted 11/23/2009 09:42 am
