PCGS Vs NGC Grading Coins

It may also depend on which service you send it under to the grading company. I think somebody posted about getting better grades from within the same company just by changing from economy to walkthrough (or something like that.

Thanks for the opinions gentlemen, I always smile inside my mind when I go to coin shops, coin shows and other places that dealers sell PCGS slabs for a higher premium, I do it every year and know that you must buy the coin for the coin not the grade. Hell!! George Bush gets em wrong once in while also. Ty Coin Hog (P.s) I will continue to fatten my coin collection from ANacs, Icg, Ngc with great coins at great prices, also when I like the look of a coin and its a bargain, I might spend that extra for PCGS slabs.

its all according to how my test goes, I may let my NGC subscription lapse and continue with PCGS. Of course that being said I have never sent a raw coin to PCGS as of yet and I may be going the other way but I will surely let you know which way I go, but I can tell you NGC has been raping me on grades on every submission

ANACS shot themselves in the foot by trying to combine a corporate move with the rollout of a new slab, but foot wounds heal. I expect good things in the future from ANACS.

Gusp, you hit the grading problems on the head. No matter how good we personally get as graders for a particular series (nobody can be good in all of them), we're always gonna be playing a roll of the dice with the top grading services and trying to second-guess them. While we might follow the ANA and Photograde standards, the TPGs are not obligated to use the same benchmarks. Indeed, when they change their standards as did PCGS over the past two years on Morgans, sometimes I wonder why I even bother. However, the TPGs DID make it possible to buy and sell coins sight unseen except by photograph, something which was not possible 20 years ago. As we've learned in this forum, in many (perhaps even most?) situations, it is very difficult to accurately grade a coin from an image. Best we can do most times is come within one or two grades from whatever the TPG gave (or might give) the coin. However flawed the system might be, it's what we have to live with until someone comes up with a better technology (holograms?). And, again with the top TPGs, at least we get a guarantee that a coin is within the ballpark of whatever the TPG graded it. These days, I am very reluctant to bid on a key, semi-key, or a high grade "common" coin from an image unless it's in a top TPG slab since I know the image presented of a raw coin is either going to exacerbate marks or is going to hide them. In any instance, purchase of any coin from an image is a gamble, albeit mitigated to one degree or another by its placement in an encapsulation by one of the top TPGs.

Fred

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Originally posted by Metalman

Im reading this thread with great interest,, because of this ,, all of you guys play the TPG game, and then wonder about the grade of your coins ? whats up with that ?

seems to me that I can have the same peace of mind with my collection without the added $ for plastic and an unreliable grading companies opinion.

Simple fact MS-65 is MS-65 in an airtite !!

If you choose to sell for less just because the plastic does not say PCGS or NGC and if you choose to pay more for the same reasons then without perhaps realising it you become part of the problem.

Rick

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Hi Rick! I was wondering when you'd come in.

The way I see it is the situation is a Catch-22. On buying a raw coin, we can take somebody's word for it that it's a particular grade (and usually be disappointed) and pay a lot less or we can shop only for top TPG-graded coins and pay a lot more. If we're selling a coin, same situation. We can hope the buyers take our word that the coin is a particular grade, which they won't, so they'll pay less than if it was in a top TPG slab. Either way, the big winners are the TPGs.

However, from your point of view, if I know my raw coin is an MS-65 (or whatever) and I have no intention to sell it, why bother to have it slabbed? The TPGs really come into play only when a coin is to be bought or sold. Preservation-wise, all a coin needs is a sturdy holder and those can be had for a couple bucks. (I suppose the vanity of having a high graded or special coin so designated by a top TPG would be nice to show around the club, but that's a different matter.)

Fred

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Originally posted by CoinHog

Great Posts, to the member that stated make sure you send in the slabbed coin, what I mean if I crossover a coin to another coin grader should I send in the cracked out plastic with previous grade to company which it name appears on the slab? Or does that other grading company notify that company. This makes real sense, I have cracked out many coins and I wondered if the pop report on the amount of say ms 64 from NGC are the real amount? This seems that it is not if people crack and resubmit, crack and resubmit. Ty Coin Hog, I learn something new everyday.

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Ty, if you crack out a coin, then send in the broken slab with the coin as a submission to either the same grading company or as a crossover to another, it defeats the purpose of cracking the coin out. The way the game is played is that a coin is cracked out to be submitted as a raw ungraded coin without the grading company knowing that it had previously been slabbed. And it is definitely a game of chance: after spending $15 to $50 for the original slab, we then spend another $15 to $50 on the chance we'll catch the grading company on a good hair day to get a higher grade. Repeat if necessary until we finally get that higher grade or go broke in submission fees.

Now, what to do with the broken slabs? I think most people who play the game only occasionally just throw them away, but I read awhile back about a dealer who sent several hundred or thousand broken slabs to one of the grading companies so they could adjust their population reports. On a true crossover where one TPG cracks out a second TPG's slab, I don't know if it notifies the other or not; I presume it does. However, repeated submissions of low numbers, high grade cracked out coins can certainly have an impact on a TPG's population report. For instance, if I have a PCGS-slabbed MS-64 1891-CC Morgan in Prooflike condition (2004 popn of 11 in MS-64 Prooflike, only one in -65) which I think can upgrade to MS-65 Prooflike, I'll keep resubmitting it, say ten times until it either makes MS-65 or I quit trying. The population just went up to 21 based on the ten submissions of the same coin. If by chance it is finally awarded MS-65, the perceived relative rarity in the PCGS popn report of this now MS-65 just went up in comparison to the numbers of MS-64 Prooflikes, even though the -65 doubled in population to two. The only way this is gonna change back to reality is if I send in all the broken slabs for population adjustment.

I suspect this scenario has happened with considerable frequency which is why we'll see a lot of coins at a particular grade (say MS-64) and very few at -65 in a particular series.

Fred