Revenant

I guess really you're talking more about theft / tampering / package destruction where my thinking was more about the packing in the box and the coins surviving the trip - which admittedly is not what the thread is really / originally about. My main concern Is that the contents are packed in a way that pads and cushions them when the box takes a hit. I almost never worry about full-on package destruction/ loss of contents. I've received many boxes over the years where the exterior box was visibly abused but the contents were 100% fine thanks to being well padded. I've also received boxes that looked fine but the contents had small / delicate parts broken off because the seller put no effort into protecting those inside the box.

I worry more about shipping raw than I ever would about shipping graded coins just because those NGC slabs seem to be built like tanks. lol.

My father's day gifts this year hit the PMG and NGC sides of my activities, with Shandy and Ben giving me a new green note storage box and a new display case for graded coins. This follows up on a couple of previous posts in my journals. These note storage boxes come in 4 colors and I'd gotten 3 of them a while back - black, blue and red, but not a green. Why? The others were $20 each and you couldn't get a green for under $30-35. No clue why, as I said at the time on the PMG side. But I guess green finally got back in stock and she was able to get one for a normal price. So now I have all the colors and a new box, just in time for a 15 note submission to come back from PMG net week. I'm super excited to get those back and I'll be reorganizing things to make better use of the new box / space. Those checks and building registry sets will probably be a major focus for me once they get here. I'll probably be using that as my diversion while trying to get through the "house situation." From Sam's birth in 2019, that Zimbabwe collection is now in its 3rd year of being my preferred repository for nervous energy. The display case for the coins looks fantastic in person - better than I'd expected really. I love cherry colored wood and this thing looks and feels great. I think I'm going to stock it with two French 20 Franc coins, my Sovereign, my Prussian 20 Mark and the Italian 20 Lire. I think that's going to be looking sweet and I'll have to find a spot for it in the new office. I think the wife might be subtly calling me lazy for illustrating this post with the cell phone in bad lighting. I could also love having one of these with a SLQ, a Walking Lib Half, a merc dime, a Peace Dollar, and a Morgan - maybe even the Morgan NGC just gave me the other month. Shandy has said she may one day gift me a custom 10 or 11 note case that could house the entire 10G set and, even if this happens before I finish the set, it could just have a couple of empty place-holder spots for the 2-3 coins I still need. I'm still undecided on if I even want to deal with the 1879/7 variety for that set. But honestly, if one ever comes up in a good grade at a reasonable price and I can afford it I will probably get it. If I can't just afford it will my coin budget, I'll probably beg and plead and see if I can get Shandy to cave.

They usually have them expire after a year. I thought about asking about it last year / as it was expiring if they could roll it over, but, honestly, I'm the one that let it expire and they were giving me new $500 credits for NGC and PMG from New awards, so I decided I just needed to take my lumps on that one.

I think I read a while back about them re-tasking people to help with de-bottlenecking and they're trying to hire more and expand but what I was talking about here was more, what is going on in the market that is causing them to need to expand and de-bottleneck. While I'm sure they're able to do that or have it already, I don't think they'd likely find it in their interest to release that data / analysis publicly.

With the pandemic pushing more sales online and away from shows I think that could well have upped the desirability of grading some coins that would have sold raw before.

Yeah. Based on the newbie forum, the YouTube dreck and some other things it wouldn't surprise me if both of those are contributing.

I have a world modern in and world modern is significantly worse than US modern right now. No clue why. Maybe NGCs efforts to go beyond the US are paying off.

It seems like one of our favorite things to do lately is complain about turnaround times at NGC. The popular narrative amongst the unhappy is that this is clearly NGC slipping but NGC says the problem is they're just slammed. They aren't blaming the problems on logistics - like not being able to get enough slab parts or inserts. They're just getting 800+ packages a day and that working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day isn't keeping up. That suggests that they're dealing with double or more the peak volume they're normally equipped to handle. But I can't help but wonder WHY they're so slammed. Through most of 2020 when there were delays I thought it was probably CoVID related and had to do with pandemic protocols slowing them down, and maybe it did, then. But that's not what they're dealing with now. The CoVID restrictions in many places in the country - including most conservative states like Florida and Texas, are lifted. Also interestingly, things seemed to be getting better and turnaround times were getting shorter in the first part of the year. They're just getting crushed by strong demand now... but what's driving that? I feel the usual temptation to think maybe it's the stimulus checks and people spending time at home instead of out and about so they're looking at and sending in coins, but does that explanation hold water? The stimulus checks were rolling out months ago and people in may places are out and about again. I don't feel like that explains why they'd still be getting crushed with packages in June. Maybe all that TPG marketing and CAC marketing is finally paying off and more people are getting into graded coins and grading coins? But that's a pretty rapid increase for a normal, organic increase in interest. Some in the forums would blame the "everything bubble" and the financialization of the hobby but I don't know that that would be good enough to explain this sudden up-tick in the last year or so. Especially since I don't think that graded coins are quite as common, "sexy" or in vogue as, say crypto-currencies for most people. I do wonder if inflation fears might be renewing interest in old coins and the history of money, but people that are worried about inflation I think are more interested in accumulating metal, not necessarily collecting graded coins. But the two interests are sympathetic and I do see a lot of silverbug posts with graded NCLT... So the whole thing, the whole situation, just seems odd to me.

This was probably 13 years ago now, before all the CoVID stuff and the back-ups in opening mail, but... I sent in a bunch of coins - probably like 50-60 and didn't use registered mail. I get a call from NGC. The box had arrived soaked and in such sad shape that the post office shrink-wrapped it so it would hold together. They took a look at this thing and actually called me to talk to me about what I wanted to do and if I wanted them to try opening it and grading the coins still. It worked out. I'm guessing the outside got soaked but we packed it well and the coins are okay on the insides. Grades came back mostly fine. But, short of dementia / alzheimers, I don't know that I will forget that call as long as I live.

Lisa points out that it isn't unusual but, in my experience, with some types/ generations of holders it is almost more rare to find one that doesn't have something like that on one or more sides.

They do seem to be getting longer but they are going to have to up costs at this rate if they're paying a ton of overtime and paying sign-on bonuses. They even included a hiring add with a coin submission I received recently. They're slammed. The price you pay for being good. They have my thanks for continuing to tolerate us and communicate with us as we constantly beat them over the head with the same questions while they come out with new tools to let us get more information faster. They really are doing what seems to be the best and everything they can - while providing a free public place to vent their spleen and disappointment at them.

Wow. I had no clue. I'm not surprised you have a special set-up with them - maybe even special deliveries - but I wouldn't have expected that.

Well, they aren't exactly the same. That is an inverted L type and yours isn't from what I can see. I think there are a lot of coins that just have generic / place holder point values from when NGC was building things out that just never got updated. Sometimes these never get updated until someone adds a coin of that type to a set and starts asking questions because something seems off. It could also be that She's right, but because some sub types are more attainable than others that some subtypes are non-competitive (yours) and some aren't (his) and so the 1 point score is a way of knee-capping your coin while not making the whole slot non-competitive. Just me guessing.

Fancy is over-rated! Go for the bizarre!

Nah... I had at one time thought about getting labels with a special Pedigree on them but it is ultimately spending more to do something that ultimately hurts their value / market appeal if I ever have to or want to sell them. So it just doesn't make sense. (to me anyway)

I can't speak to more recent times but I sent in some coins in early March and they shipped back pretty much exactly when the turnaround times predicted, measure from the time they were delivered, not from when they were entered- same as they say. They were on time even though a coin went to NCS to residue removal. I had a PMG submission that was due based on turnaround times to clear next week and it cleared/ shipped today. So in my (admittedly limited) experience they are meeting or beating advertised times.

Mine is now showing as having been delivered with the tool too, so hopefully yours too.

I feel your pain to a degree. I let a $500 award credit expire last year. It's the price we pay for procrastinating sometimes. Lesson learned I'm doing better this year.

Thank you!

Oh... unkind. I don't like this idea. Edit: Shandy says, for a proper test, we should give it to Sam.

The non-scratch resistant ones definitely seem to get scratched reliably but I don't know how good the scratch resistant ones really are at living up to their names yet.

I'd love to know the answer to this myself - having just gotten 8 gold coins back in scratch resistant holders I didn't see any differences off-hand so I'm guessing either the answer is "no" or it's subtle.

USPS Tracking: 9405503699300403140739 USPS says this package was delivered a week ago but your system says you haven't scanned it yet... Are you backed up or do I need to file a claim / trace with USPS?

Well, given that a 70 is supposed to be perfect under 5x or 10x magnification, you'd expect pretty much exactly that.