Gone Wild - Weigh In... posted by TD Henson

[CSJournals-migration]

NGC vs PCGS

 

I hate the rhetoric that goes back and forth between NGC and PCGS collectors. I agree with Electric Peak that the Walker was wildly over priced... I've seen lots of examples in the Roosevelt series that are just plain stupid, especially when you consider PCGS grades 5x the coins due to the bulk submissions.

 

I have both NGC and PCGS coins in my set and I'll have to tell you that more than half of the PCGS coins are a disappointment to me when I get them. I buy them due to availability, but if I had my choice I would prefer NGC, as I believe they are more conservative and truer to grade.

 

I just bought a 2008-P SMS Roosevelt Dime (very low budget), in comparison to the Walker, but still a nice coin. The FT coins for this year and mint mark are comparitively rare and as such are highly priced in MS 69 FT - so I opted to fill the slot in MS 69 - I wouldn't even have sent this coin in for grading. I count at least 10 tick marks on it - albeit they are very small, but how could this be considered as one step away from perfection. I compared this to my recent submission of a business strike 2009-D Roosevelt Dime that NGC graded MS 67 FT. The BS dime is way better than the junk I now have in a PCGS holder. In fact the best I would give the SMS dime would be MS 67... Glad I didn't pay a premium to get it!!!

 

Just my two cents worth... Thanks to Electric Peak for sharing his thoughts on the subject.

 

Todd

 

See more journals by TD Henson

[Thane]

Two-pronged thought:

 

(1) Most of us are COLLECTORS, so we should care most about holding and preserving the best possible collection we would want, in as nice a presentation as possible. For me, that's NGC holders, with their fairly affordable and wide-ranging variety and mint error services. (Would be nicer if they had someone on staff to make new CONECA attributions, so one wouldn't have to submit a modern DDO once to Coneca and once to NGC for attribution and slabbing ...)

 

(2) Most of us are on a BUDGET, and collecting is a PROCESS and not an END, therefore MARKETABILITY of what we already have slabbed is VERY IMPORTANT. I get the feeling that the market for NGC slabs right now is being propped up by Collector Society registry holders. Without us, the market could very well go as sour as NTC, SEGS, you name it. It's pretty hard to buy the coin and not the holder when there are a gazillion auctions online, it's easy to compare prices against grades, but photos are unreliable except at the BEST auction sites (like ha.com), those auction sites are somehow also playing market-makers and getting WAY higher final prices than at other sites (but only in a small segment of the coin universe) ... Until the ENTIRE INDUSTRY keeps an electronic "fingerprint" database of every coin a la PCGS Plus, PCGS slabs are the only way to guarantee getting a decent fraction of what you deserve when you sell.

 

Hmm, that's a long thought, very few folks read these boards, I see two ways to pursue the conversation - either repeated journaling, or getting a widely-read thread going in the regular message boards.