USAuPzlBxBob

And here we are… almost a year later… a year of Covid-19, and with thoughts of maybe trying to correct my 100 year gold collection to be more in line with this one, what I'm finding is that coins needed for this collection are scarcely available. For example, just looking around on dealer websites I used to frequent often, I didn't find any 1863 $3 Indian Princess Heads, and the difficult gold dollars, not that they're expensive (or exceedingly rare) seem to have been snatched up into private collections for whatever reasons, and aren't available whatsoever. It is almost like people have been getting more involved with their collections, or more people, with idle time at home, have decided to take up coin collecting. Looks like I'll just leave my current collection as is since it already accomplishes many of the objective this thread details. Thought this thread had disappeared. I would type in it's title, that I had saved elsewhere, put it in quotation marks to narrow the search to exactly the words and capitalization used, and "Found 0 results" would come back. I then went to the US, World, and Ancient Coins forum and started working my way back… one page at a time. Found this thread 44 pages back.

In this day and age of Internet shenanigans wouldn't it be possible for a high-rating Registry Set to be verified without the submitter owning a single coin? The reason I bring this up is because some Registry Winners provide no photos, no comments, and how is it known that they really own the coins? Does NGC contact them directly asking for proof of ownership before granting an award? For example, imagine an unscrupulous member initiates a Registry Set. Then the slots get filled with valid coins from dealer inventory images that reveal holder brand/coin grade/holder ID number. NGC verifies that the coins match known coins — holder, grade, ID number — but there is no way for NGC to investigate further without contacting the member for proof of ownership. And since the coins reside with dealers, the coins would not be in other member Registry Sets, which could raise a red flag for NGC to investigate further. And for NGC to investigate dealer inventories, which change all the time, this sort of crosscheck might be prohibitive from a logistics perspective. Admittedly, this is an extreme example, and the key phrase is "unscrupulous member." Still, does NGC go the final yard to assure authentic collections, and if so, what would that final yard be?

Matt dac, are you satisfied with the debris reflected onto your coin. That debris appears to be on the inside of your holder, as I would think that you would wipe the outside of your holder of dust before taking pics. Anywhere, in the CAMEO reflection surface, that you see a white spec and a mirror spec nearby, that may be dust on the inside surface of your holder.

"The waiting is the hardest part." ~ Tom Petty Just about every time I've dealt with NCG, and the coins have been gold since that's all I collect, I've gotten so nervous and impatient that I've actually called them. Everything has always worked out fine, and I've had good luck on crossovers from PCGS, where two or three of the coins came back with a "+" in the grade. Love the NGC holders, their presentation — especially for gold coins… the white contrast —, and with a plus mark, the coins just reek of classiness. All my gold coins reside in NGC holders!