So, I recently have been seeing some chatter on Facebook and elsewhere that CAC, no longer content to just deface PCGS and NGC slabs with oval stickers, is now going to be grading coins completely on their own, and putting them in slabs that look shockingly similar to PCGS slabs... I wonder how PCGS feels about that. 

Then I come on here the other day and see the 7/24 announcement that NGC is taking away the points bonus for CAC stickered coins effective the next day. As I look on the boards, there's some chatter about NGC not being able to use the verification service anymore and its starting to look like someone - possibly someone in CAC - decided that the friendly relationship that has existed that allowed for PCGS and NGC to check the CAC stickers and award these points in a highly efficient and automated way may be over because it may not serve someone's perceived interests anymore.  Yeah.... it's conspiratorial of me, and supposedly the functionality is coming back... but it has been down for about 1.5-2.0 months apparently, which seems interesting and suspicious, including with the timing. 

But, for me, this change to point values has some interesting personal side effects.

Some of you may remember that about 3 years ago the 1932 set I built with my stepfather lost the top spot in the category after being on top for more than a decade:

I made a post about it at the time and otherwise mostly shrugged it off - we weren't going to spend $$$$ to defend the title on such short notice.

My stepfather, at the time, was not thrilled as you might imagine, and I got a call not long after asking - somewhat bitterly - why PCGS coins were getting more points than NGC coins in the NGC registry. It didn't make sense to him. I had to explain that it wasn't the fact that they were PCGS coins - it was the fact that they were CAC coins. I could understand his confusion though - in addition to being almost fully CAC stickered, the other set was almost completely PCGS coins where ours was almost fully NGC graded. But it was the bonus for the CAC stickers that was putting him over the top of us.

Note - they have 5 PCGS and 1 NGC to our 1 PCGS and 5 NGC coins. But they have 5 CAC stickers to our 0 and the stickers are all on the PCGS coins.

I had actually looked into the pricing for submitting coins to CAC in the past couple of years and tried talking to my step-father because I knew getting some of our coins stickered and getting the points boost could have put us back on top, probably for just a couple hundred dollars - a lot less than trying to upgrade one of the $1,000-$4,000 coins in that set to something even more expensive. I'd been thinking if we went the upgrade route the best option was probably going to be the $10 Eagle just because bumping that from a 63 to a 64 or 65 would be easier and probably cheaper than trying to track down MS64 or MS65 D and S quarters. But, based on current pricing, upgrading the S quarter to a 64 might have been an attractive and reasonable option.

But... as of yesterday... all of those bonus points are now gone! (For now?) So, Liberty just took about a 700-point hit, and that has flipped the balance of the points back in our favor.

So, if you want a funny... We made our set back around 2008, and we have not upgraded anything in close to 15 years now, I think, and we won for about 12 years (2008-2019).

Liberty then made their set in October 2020 - a month before the cut-off - and has not changed any of their coins out in the last 3 years, and they've won for the last 3 years. For the last 3 years we've still gotten the "best set" award based on only NGC coins because... their set barely has any NGC coins.

And now we're back on top in #1 and we may take the awards again in about 3 months - both awards possibly, NGC and overall.

In that time - we'll say 3 years, since October 2020 - nothing has changed. I guess technically my last re-imaging and presentation update might have happened in that period - I can't remember the timing on that - but neither set has been upgraded. The only thing that has changed is how points are assigned.

I'll be interested to see if this prompts some kind of response or some upgrades from Liberty to try to take the top spot back.

I haven't talked to my Stepfather about this, but I guess I'll have to give him a call soon and let him know, just for a laugh.