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When you purchase your next NGC or PCGS graded coin from a dealer....

Started by carson city,

134 posts in this topic

Arizonadesertrat

Arizonadesertrat

Posted
Posted
Looking at pictures of coins in books and on the internet will NOT help you to grade MS or proof coinage. All it will do is give you a false sense of security.

 

WOW! I must have wasted my time reading this book. Maybe I should send it to John and see if he can make heads or tails from reading it.

 

 

1903-Owithwiremeshsteelfence016.jpg

 

TDN's statement, quoted above, is accurate. You didn't waste your time, but reading this book (or Halperin's book 'How to Grade U. S. Coins', or...) is a very poor substitute for studying lots of coins in hand. Many problems can only really be appreciated by tilting a coin to look at it from different angles or looking at artificially toned coins. More importantly, grading is not an exact science---if you look at 2-3 dozen examples of 1924 MS64 Saints (or 1880S Morgans or whatever) you will see a rough 2-point spread in quality (roughly MS63-MS65). Unless you look at lots of coins in a given series, you won't develop a good feel for what is nice for the grade. Books can indeed leave one with a false sense of security.

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MarkFeld

MarkFeld

Posted
Posted
Looking at pictures of coins in books and on the internet will NOT help you to grade MS or proof coinage. All it will do is give you a false sense of security.

 

WOW! I must have wasted my time reading this book. Maybe I should send it to John and see if he can make heads or tails from reading it.

 

 

1903-Owithwiremeshsteelfence016.jpg

No book, no matter expert its author, can teach you how to grade uncirculated and proof coins accurately. The grading standards and language used to explain them are rarely specific and universal enough to allow us to distinguish one grade from another.

 

For example, how many marks cause a Morgan Dollar to grade MS64 as opposed to MS65? How large can they be? Where can they occur? What about one large one vs. a series of very small ones? How much weakness in strike is required to down-grade a coin a point? Two points?

 

Please select at random some examples of text from the book and quote it verbatim for two different grades (such as an MS or PR63 vs. an MS or PR64) of the same type of coin and let's see if it tells us what we need to know in order to be able to grade the coins accurately and distinguish one grade from the other.

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TomB

TomB

Posted
Posted
Looking at pictures of coins in books and on the internet will NOT help you to grade MS or proof coinage. All it will do is give you a false sense of security.

 

WOW! I must have wasted my time reading this book. Maybe I should send it to John and see if he can make heads or tails from reading it.

 

 

1903-Owithwiremeshsteelfence016.jpg

No book, no matter expert its author, can teach you how to grade uncirculated and proof coins accurately. The grading standards and language used to explain them are rarely specific and universal enough to allow us to distinguish one grade from another.

 

For example, how many marks cause a Morgan Dollar to grade MS64 as opposed to MS65? How large can they be? Where can they occur? What about one large one vs. a series of very small ones? How much weakness in strike is required to down-grade a coin a point? Two points?

 

Please select at random some examples of text from the book and quote it verbatim for two different grades (such as an MS or PR63 vs. an MS or PR64) of the same type of coin and let's see if it tells us what we need to know in order to be able to grade the coins accurately and distinguish one grade from the other.

I don't have the second edition of this book, but I do have the first edition and one thing that I have always found amazing is that PCGS used the same coin for various series to illustrate more than one grade in their full-color plates. One example is the PF67 and PF66 quarter eagles where the same 1901 coin is used and simply has had imprefections removed or added by photoshop. More examples are of a 1928 double eagle used as both the example of an MS65/66 and an MS65 as well as a 1927 double eagle used as both the example of an MS64/65 and an MS64 as well as an MS63. Please don't get me wrong; the plates are beautifully done, but I think they could have used different coins without the photoshop editing. By the way, the ANA Grading Guide has done the same thing where they show the identical 1837 CB quarter as both an EF and a VF, but without any editing. doh!

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Arizonadesertrat

Arizonadesertrat

Posted
Posted
I hope we don't go from today's "if the coin isn't slabbed, something must be wrong with it" to "if the slab that the coin is in doesn't have a sticker on it, something must be wrong with it."

 

I'm not yet convinced that knowledgeable collectors will shy away from non-CAC-stickered coins. I still buy raw coins, for example, but am more cautious than when evaluating slabbed ones (because of counterfeiting). The same thing may occur for slabbed coins with and without CAC stickers---experienced collectors will probably buy both.

 

Rick Snow, on his Eagle Eye Rare Coins website, thinks that the prices of a number of CAC-certified coins will go up 30-100% in the near term (some nickel, silver, gold coins, and Lincoln cents). The possibility that CAC will run up market prices for half cents and large cents is remote because EAC collectors don't put a lot of stock in slabbing. He doesn't think that CAC-stickered coins will cause price increases for Flying Eagle or Indian Head Cents, because he has cornered much of the market for these and already has his Eagle Eye PhotoSeal system in place and working. I tend to agree with his thoughts and will adjust my purchase plans for 2008 accordingly (just in case this view turns out to be correct).

 

PCGS/NGC slabbed coins that aren't solid for their grades are sitting around (or passed around) in dealer inventories and not selling well. So, dealers already have a problem.

 

What I want to know is if CAC will internally police itself and remove stickers from low-end coins that shouldn't have been stickered in the first place. If not, IMO there will be a serious problem with CAC due to loss of collector confidence.

 

 

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Houston Investor

Houston Investor

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My current excel analysis of dealer prices has been updated to include CAC coins.

 

Of my samples CDN Bid + 45% is being asked for CAC stickered coins while CDN Bid + 31% for dealers whose inventories are not CAC stickered. Consequently a tackon premium of 14 % is being asked for these CAC stickered coins. In one instance, a dealer was asking a staggering 100% above CDN Bid on a CAC stickered CC gold half eagle. I did not put this in the analysis as I did not feel it was the typical markup in that person's inventory. Seems like the bigger ticket the coin is sometimes, well the bigger the markup - tis the season to be jolly I guess! Since my analysis is an evergreen tool, I will keep you posted. My analysis takes Asking Price / CDN Bid to get MUF (markup factor). I then do subtotals on the sampling data sorting by dealer to get average MUF for that dealer. Guess what - the dealer with mostly CAC coins has about the highest MUF of anybody! If you think I am joking then go run your own analysis. I do my homework - what about you?

 

Yes, it will be interesting what the auction results say. Have you seen CAC stickered coins on Teletrade?

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