Henri Charriere

1 hour ago, kbbpll said:

I don't consider "accurately grading" and "autopilot" to be opposed to one another. If you're good at what you do, you can be on "autopilot" all the time. An airplane on autopilot doesn't just screw up and crash. That's why it's called autopilot.

I disagree. An airplane on auto-pilot implies the pilot is simply overseeing flight as opposed to grading which is hands-on. [Anyhow, my religion forbids me to accept Perfect, Almost Perfect, Not Quite Perfect, etc. grading as applied to fresh from the Mint coinage.]

37 minutes ago, MarkFeld said:

I don’t understand how you reached your above conclusions from “NGC sells labels and profesional opinions, not coins.”

NGC doesn’t sell coins. The comment included the word “professional” and labels have certainly become more widely created and promoted in more recent times.

 

 

1 hour ago, Quintus Arrius said:

It suggests a lack of competence and professionalism which, however likely or suspected, cannot be addressed, will not evoke a meaningful response and is therefore better left unsaid. TPGS are like the CIA or FBI in that they will "neither confirm, nor deny."

Clarification:  my remark was intended for Big Nub Numis who used the word "autopilot" to speculatively describe what may happen to graders who are saddled with Monster Boxes of SAEs.

4 hours ago, MarkFeld said:

How is that a cold shot? 

It suggests a lack of competence and professionalism which, however likely or suspected, cannot be addressed, will not evoke a meaningful response and is therefore better left unsaid. TPGS are like the CIA or FBI in that they will "neither confirm, nor deny."

On 6/19/2020 at 12:16 AM, Cascadia said:

NGC sells labels and profesional opinions, not coins.

That's a cold shot!  

On 3/31/2014 at 10:13 AM, Nutmeg Coin said:

 

 

Do you agree or disagree that US hoard law lags behind the law in Europe?

I agree but I cannot help but recall that the recovery of artifacts found at the site of the 1857 sinking of the S.S. Central America (just off the North Carolina coast) was meticulously documented, researched and part of the proceeds sold before greed set in -- and the next thing you know, the expedition's head is arrested, convicted and sentenced to a term in Federal prison.

8 minutes ago, kbbpll said:

At my old company they called it being "shuttered", as if they'd ever just open the shutters again. My schmuck "boss" (at least, he thought he was) approached me on axe day and offered to help me find a job, like some benevolent overlord whose ring I could kiss. I said nah, I'm going back to my old team on Monday. The look on his face was priceless.

I wonder what this housecleaning in Philadelphia was all about. Doesn't seem like they could just stop making coins. There was a short recession in 1869.

Ah, the City of Brotherly Love. I knew there was a correlation with this Mint and the advent of errors. (Just kidding, of course!)

On the plus side, gold and silver are up, up, up

36 minutes ago, VKurtB said:

Good man, Quintus! However, two problems; 1) Most collectors don't know, and care even less, about sending in the "old" labels, and 2) therefore, population reports are still the stuff of fantasyland.

How do we get others to send in cracked out labels too?

See? Your time here has educated you to things beyond your imagination already.

You got that right!

10 hours ago, Zebo said:

That's exactly how it is and if you do not return the label from the crossed over coin - they will not update their census even though you send electronic proof of the cross over and a copy of the certificate.  And you wonder why the census/population reports are overstated.

Makes sense.  Will do.  Tks.

1 hour ago, Zebo said:

I believe you are wrong on this one.

I am sorry to hear that because what it implies is the TPG to which coins are submitted record just the submission and leave the other TPG twisting in the wind.  Unbelievable! Thanks.

2 hours ago, MarkFeld said:

How do YOU determine what others - whether vintage or modern collectors - are looking for? Different collectors care about different things.

Additionally, any conclusions you reach are likely to be faulty, if you’re basing them on mintages (but not taking the estimated number of survivors into consideration) and published price guides (but ignoring actual transactions).

I am Spartacus.  I am inclined to agree, and will even go further: when your particular set is "complete" and you are fully-invested but there is still room for upgrading, you will take your cue from "all-in Jeopardy James" and take the plunge irrespective of the leading economic indicators otherwise your set will languish in the purgatory of infinite dormancy.

1 hour ago, Zebo said:

Question - if the label was returned to you, did you send the label to the TPG that originally slabbed the coin before crossing it over? If not - they would not update their census or population numbers.

No, I did not. As a dyed-in-the wool, card-carrying census stalker I asked myself a simple question:  what is the likelihood that my three (3) cross-grade requests, involving foreign coins over a hundred years old at the upper-most grading tiers, would be honored "simultaneously" with submissions from another source for the years involved?  The odds would be DNA-like astronomical. One in a quadrillion? All the necessary (correct) adjustments had already been made. If I am wrong, I have some work to do.

Impossible to answer without clarification and context.

4 hours ago, VKurtB said:

On the very very rare occasion when I have to  "whip out" the serious magnification, I "whip out" the heavy iron:

 

•  

 

 

 

Not for nothing, but how many people have actually taken a cold hard look at that VDB or the micro printing on these new bills.  

7 minutes ago, VKurtB said:

"Despicable" is a good word to describe much of what all too many dealers engage in routinely as an ongoing business practice. "Cross grading" is the least of it. There are many times more cases in which a coin from TPG Firm A is cracked out and returned repeatedly to TPG Firm A (NOT B or C or D) over and over until the desired grade is obtained. As long as a coin has a high "delta" from one extra point, this will continue and accelerate.

Here's where my "rank amateur" status is confirmed:  I honestly assumed the photographs taken by TPG were akin to the identification scanners used by the Gemological Institute (or similar concern) which records the unique markers on coins, much like DNA, to discourage theft, counterfeiting, etc.for all posterity so that if you were to resubmit a coin some guy further down the grading line would exclaim, "Hey Mike, com'ere a minute will you. Where've we seen this before?"

2 hours ago, VKurtB said:

The "crack out" game is so ubiquitous that any hope of "encapsulated coin represents a population the sanctity of which must be honored if it is to have any meaning at all for a hobby" is a ship long since sailed. There is exactly ZERO sanctity of any population report of any slabbed coins. The number of truly unique coins slabbed is a small fraction of the number of slabbings, except perhaps for low value moderns. People are not returning crack out labels for deletion from the populations. I've walked many an ANA coin show watching dealers who have just purchased slabbed coins from a collector proceed to place the slabs on a chair leg and literally stomp on the slabs with a boot heel to break them open in order to resubmit them. Just a normal buy/sell spread is not enough for many dealers; they want the "upgrade plus buy/sell" margin. In other words, if they look at a coin and they don't think they can win the "crack out" game, they'll never buy the coin in the first place.

I find it absolutely despicable that the hobby I enjoyed as a child (where Morgan dollars were available for the asking from the local bank) has descended to the level that what I chose to regard as rumor is a robust phenomenon with a name: crack-out.  The last time I violated a tenet of my religion, and requested cross-grading service, I was pleasantly surprised when one was up-graded and all labels were returned to me unsolicited and I saw that the necessary adjustments had been made to the respective TPG populations involved.

23 minutes ago, VKurtB said:

We needn't, and probably shouldn't, for fear of being expelled from this board, exchange "greetings" from my sister. It wouldn't pass muster from the moderators for sure. It's a politics and estate thing.

What a shame!  I am sure she has her own theory as to why Brenner's initials were removed from the reverse AND why they were placed on Lincoln's right shoulder [where they can be viewed in all their incised, bas-relief splendor with a thirty mag lens].  Ha! Ha! Ha!  Dino the Dinosaur, indeed.

4 minutes ago, VKurtB said:

And she told me to say "hi" for her.

Thanks. 

2 hours ago, Morpheus1967 said:

What are you talking about.  

An encapsulated coin represents a population the sanctity of which must be honored if it is to have any meaning at all for a hobby beset by unreported de-encapsulations and mass meltings of unknown quantities of precious metals.  A Hoard is simply a point of reference like S.S.C.A. shipwreck gold helpful in establishing provenance. Price is dictated by supply and demand.  Some of the more notable Hoard releases have shifted the orbits of some major compilations for all time.

7 hours ago, kbbpll said:

How about if you just leave me out of this? I already said that I don't know anything about these. I looked up "French 20-franc gold rooster" and that was the extent of it. Now you're lumping me in with some nefarious cabal who is out to ignore your precious niche. I don't appreciate it. Life and coin collecting are unfair. Get over it.

The commutation papers are on the governor's desk awaiting his signature.

On 7/8/2020 at 10:48 AM, MarkFeld said:

Alan, why do you despise that terminology? Your way of describing it would certainly take the  out of it!

True.  Sounds way better than a hobo nickel.

On 7/2/2020 at 6:45 AM, Morpheus1967 said:

Take it out of the slab and tell me the difference between a 2017 eagle proof and one from the 2020 "West Point Hoard".  

Inherently bad form to even suggest this but an entirely legitimate query.

I do not know what kind of Journal you have in mind but I would avoid changing the name to The Wall Street Journal.

6 hours ago, RWB said:

A "bag mark" can be a "scratch." It's only a matter of detail - both are damage. And -- it didn't hit the strings so no noise was made.

And the intact accent aigu over the lower-case e and well-defined dentil work -- and superb overall condition contribute to the desirability of your coin.