I know I'm not crossing over my PCGS world coins.

If there's anything I cannot stand is changing the rules in the middle of the game. It's like if I can't win, let's change the rules until I win. All along, we've been told that our PCGS coins are welcome in the NGC registry, but now I'm treated as a 2nd class citizen because I have PCGS coins in an NGC registry. Granted, it is an NGC registry, and I've always felt a set populated with more than 50 % NGC coins should have some kind of preferential treatment, but this is over the edge.

If NGC wants to change registry policy, then as suggested by other collectors on the boards, existing PCGS coins could be grandfathered or some sort of gradual weaning policy maybe instituted, but a drop-dead date of January 31. You have got to be kidding. At any rate, I am disappointed by this move, and I am suspicious of NGC's motives.

Fortunately, this policy change only affects two of my world sets, "Gary's Golden Wilhelmina Guldens and Gary's Britannia's." The Wilhelmina set was created as a whole and this new policy will break up the owner descriptions. Three of eleven coins in this set are PCGS, but each of these coins is significant. The MS-63 1898 is rare and hard to locate; the MS-65 1911 is graded at my set goal, and the MS-67 1917 is the highest-grade coin in the set. For the Britannia set; five of 14 coins are PCGS, but the lone MS-70 in this set is PCGS. The question now is "where do I go from here"?

What I can say is that I am proud of both these sets, PCGS coins and all, and that they need to be displayed. The Wilhelmina and Britannia sets are among the best in the world and what NGC does with their registry does not change that one iota. PCGS and NGC are the top third-party graders, and I am not crossing over my PCGS coins to fit a NGC registry. If only I knew how to design a web page to display my sets there, I would. I can't go over to PCGS because I run into the same problem. So what do I do?

When the change is instituted, I am moving both these sets to the "custom" side of the registry where I am told PCGS coins are still welcome. I will leave my registry sets as placeholders for the eligible coins and place a link in the set description to the corresponding custom set. This way I can display my sets as a whole.

I may not win many awards, but that does not change the fact that I am proud of the sets I have created. In the future when I upgrade the coins in either of these sets, I will buy NGC coins only. In spite of the changes coming, I still prefer NGC graded world coins.

In the end, when you get right down to it, it's not about the registry or the plastic, but about the coins. If you have a set that you are proud of, you don't need a registry to tell you that, so happy collecting!

Gary