Criteria for MS65 CAC Gold

[breakdown-migration]

"Nowhere does JA actually say anything." Well, that's not true. As Jom referred to above, John Albanese has recently participated in a series of conference calls to answer questions people have about CAC.

[nk1nk]

 

I have been informed that I was incorrect. But in answer to your question - there is a long standing and well established market for PL Morgan Dollars. The same cannot be said for other types of PL coins.

 

What difference does that make to the standard? A designation is based on the condition of the coin, not the condition of the market.

 

From various posts there is a lot of "JA told me this" and then "JA told me that." Nowhere does JA actually say anything - its all secondhand, contradictory, and seemingly made up on the spot in answer to a question. Why does CAC have such a hard time actually explaining and publishing their standards? Why can't they satisfactorily answer these questions (questions that have been asked since the beginning of the company)? Maybe if they did, I'd take them a little more seriously. As it is now, they are a random sticker on slabs - and I don't care. I realize I'm small fry, but I can't be the only one who feels this way.

 

This is exactly how I feel. You go to their website and it's a joke for information, everything is very vague, not a single bit of information on a gold sticker. And your right, there is nothing more annoying to read or hear JA said this or JA said that. Tell JA to put it on his website, if he did he could probably take a well needed vacation from taking the thousands of personal calls he takes daily, how he has time to peel and stick all those stickers is a mystery.

 

Nick

[nk1nk]

"Nowhere does JA actually say anything." Well, that's not true. As Jom referred to above, John Albanese has recently participated in a series of conference calls to answer questions people have about CAC.

 

Where can one listen to these conference calls?

 

Nick

[breakdown-migration]

I learned about the calls from Ankur's unofficial CAC forum.

[nk1nk]

I learned about the calls from Ankur's unofficial CAC forum.

 

The one where your not allowed to speak negatively towards cac and have to be approved to participate? That's a perfect place to spread the good word about cac. So you only heard of the conference call, again mere speculation of what someone thinks they might have heard JA say.

[FishyOne]

I believe some of the confusion stems from equating CAC Approved = PQ. It does not. I could be mistaken but did not CAC even advertise that a Green Sticker = Premium Quality at one time?

 

Anyway, CAC stickers do make my coins more marketable. They might not do that for your coins, but my coins with CAC stickers do tend to receive stronger and higher bids. Yeah, I'm a small fry too, but there is a market here or JA wouldn't be in business.

[BLive1972]

There are many discussion boards that require approval. Nothing unusual.

 

For me, CAC is mostly educational. Talking about your submissions face to face with him is quite a learning experience. Regardless of what anyone thinks, those who actually speak with him know whats been said and that's all that matters.

 

I see it from both sides. If I was in the business for multiple years, maybe I would have gripes about them too. Who knows. Right now, I can use the additional reassurance.

 

 

[Dudley the 1st]

Just a point of information here. I have been in the process of selling my entire ( small ) coin & currency collection. I had roughly seven pieces which were CAC'd, some of which I did pay a small premium for. I contacted CAC, gave them a list and received a buy-back offer which was within under $25.00 of what I had originally paid at auction. No hassle, no taking or sending photos, no auction listing fee's, no back of grey sheet offers.blah blah blah. I don't know of any TPG or auction company who stands behind their " opinions" with their money as CAC does.

[BKW]

Case in point, CAC is stickering alot of coins with 'original' surfaces that are pretty much darn unattractive. But CAC sees a market in this I believe - how many of us harrumph about dipped coins these days and bestow the positives about 'less' dipped coins with perceived original surfaces being better? Well many of these are unspectacular and I have viewed many that with CAC stickers that I would never buy

 

+1

[mommam17]

When CAC started 5.5 years ago there was a lot of bad feelings towards it. Some people wanted it to fail, some said it was a money making scam. Most of it is gone today. I think anyone who has problems with it now, would not, after talking to JA for about 5-10 minutes. Also dealers have been breaking down coins into A, B, and C for many years. That's not new.

[coinman1794]

What a lot of people fail or openly refuse to understand is that CAC is a marketing and coin trading tool. If CAC believes that a coin can be marketed in the holder that it is in, it does not matter if the coin has been net graded or "dead on" for the grade, it still might get a sticker. CAC does not mean that every coin with the sticker is "Premium Quality" (PQ) for the grade or superior in any way. It means that it is acceptable from their point of view.

 

I am not making this up. This is the message that I have gotten on conversations with dealers who work with CAC at the shows.

I absolutely agree with BillJones on this (thumbs u .

 

Then they should change their FAQ to reflect a different reality than they state on their site. There they state that they approve "A" and "B" coins for grade but not "C" coins.

Personally, I think the concept of "A", "B", "C" or whatever coins is mostly hogwash. That would imply a continuum of some thirty grades just at the mint-state level! There simply is no way anyone can grade coins to such a level of absurd precision, especially given the fact that grading is subjective to begin with.

 

Rather, as BillJones implies above, I just ignore all the tedious discussions about whether a coin is "A", "B", "C", blah blah blah, and figure that if CAC stickered it, then it was because they see marketing potential for that particular coin. Once you understand that the stickers are a marketing vehicle, then a lot of noise and distraction simply falls by the wayside.

 

Of course, there's nothing wrong with new marketing concepts. It would just be nice if they were simply explained as such, and did not become festooned with distracting technical jargon that defies definition.

 

This is the nature of most market graded coins today (not just CAC). That said, I do not think this is true 100% of the the time. When you talk to the grading services, they will give technical reasons for why a coin graded the way it did, not feelings of general marketplace acceptance and dissregard for technical A/B/C condition. Basically, on one hand, you have the theory; and on the other, you have the reality. I have seen coins that I thought were marginal, grade-wise, but that had extraordinary eye appeal, that ended up being stickered anyway. Some coins are infinitely marketable regardless of the holder.

[jom]

I learned about the calls from Ankur's unofficial CAC forum.

 

The one where your not allowed to speak negatively towards cac and have to be approved to participate? That's a perfect place to spread the good word about cac. So you only heard of the conference call, again mere speculation of what someone thinks they might have heard JA say.

 

No one keeps anyone from speaking "negatively". You just have to be a member of CAC. If you aren't it isn't any loss really. If you want to know something specific why not just call up CAC and ask JA yourself?

 

jom

[James_OldeTowne]

The thing is, I keep reading in various places how, allegedly, dealers have "for years been using A, B, and C to evaluate coins", and wonder where the heck that myth came from? Not long ago, over the course of a few shows, I asked a fair number of dealers at random (probably some twenty or so) about whether they use any such formula, and ZERO of them did. This is why I think it is just so much nonsense to claim that dealers somehow put significant effort into trying to break down mint-state grades down into another 30 levels of resolution. It just plain makes no sense.

 

Now, my impression is that just about everyone does indeed look for "high end" versus "low end" for the grade, and price accordingly. That is common sense. Nobody necessarily wants to sell premium quality material at low-quality pricing levels. But it just doesn't seem at all like reality to claim that there's some sort of secret mystical "A B C within grades" system in use by all the dealers out there.

 

I never heard of such a thing until CAC, or promoters of CAC, announced it.

 

Oh well, maybe I'm just not up to snuff on the inner workings of the important dealers in the market.

[DirtyGoldMan]

It has been my experience that gem gold coins that have been stickered by CAC are nicer than the average group of gem gold that one might assemble. This is an area of expertise for JA, and he knows where to draw the line. On any individual coin, perhaps you could argue, one way or the other.

 

For those of you who believe that there is no rhyme or reason why the CAC stickers one coin over the other, I urge you to buy the rejects. They should be bargains, relatively anyway, and I sometimes do this myself if I cannot afford the higher end piece but still want one for my collection.

[Nutmeg Coin]

The thing is, I keep reading in various places how, allegedly, dealers have "for years been using A, B, and C to evaluate coins", and wonder where the heck that myth came from? Not long ago, over the course of a few shows, I asked a fair number of dealers at random (probably some twenty or so) about whether they use any such formula, and ZERO of them did. This is why I think it is just so much nonsense to claim that dealers somehow put significant effort into trying to break down mint-state grades down into another 30 levels of resolution. It just plain makes no sense.

 

Now, my impression is that just about everyone does indeed look for "high end" versus "low end" for the grade, and price accordingly. That is common sense. Nobody necessarily wants to sell premium quality material at low-quality pricing levels. But it just doesn't seem at all like reality to claim that there's some sort of secret mystical "A B C within grades" system in use by all the dealers out there.

 

I never heard of such a thing until CAC, or promoters of CAC, announced it.

 

Oh well, maybe I'm just not up to snuff on the inner workings of the important dealers in the market.

 

I have heard that the really good graders and crack out artists can make grade determinations down to 1/10 of a grade, again, based on what criteria? On any given coin you have many, many factors that go in to assigning a certain grade level, certain factors have priority. Also every date and mint mark coin has a continuum where the coin lies within it. 1904 $20s are so plentiful that gems have to be better than other dates to get the grade, but some squeak through regardless.

 

RCNH have been sticklers for strict grading criteria, especially original coins vs. AT coins; somewhere they said that CAC was stickering such coins in the beginning, but they sounded an alert and they evolved. Probably at this stage of the game with large numbers of CAC coins, but small as a percentage basis, being problems for them, they are more cautious than ever.

[DirtyGoldMan]

1904 $20s are so plentiful that gems have to be better than other dates to get the grade, but some squeak through regardless.

 

Again, my experience has been that the more scarce and expensive coins are given the least latitude and the plentiful 1904 $20 Libs are graded more liberally. YMMV

[coinman1794]

The thing is, I keep reading in various places how, allegedly, dealers have "for years been using A, B, and C to evaluate coins", and wonder where the heck that myth came from? Not long ago, over the course of a few shows, I asked a fair number of dealers at random (probably some twenty or so) about whether they use any such formula, and ZERO of them did. This is why I think it is just so much nonsense to claim that dealers somehow put significant effort into trying to break down mint-state grades down into another 30 levels of resolution. It just plain makes no sense.

 

Now, my impression is that just about everyone does indeed look for "high end" versus "low end" for the grade, and price accordingly. That is common sense. Nobody necessarily wants to sell premium quality material at low-quality pricing levels. But it just doesn't seem at all like reality to claim that there's some sort of secret mystical "A B C within grades" system in use by all the dealers out there.

 

I never heard of such a thing until CAC, or promoters of CAC, announced it.

 

Oh well, maybe I'm just not up to snuff on the inner workings of the important dealers in the market. [/quote

 

James,

 

I suspect that most dealers chosen at random are simply not sofisticated enough graders to attempt assigning the exact grade within a grade. Even if they are, it takes someone with a grading service to make the opinion official. It really takes someone whose sole business is grading coins to attempt consistency in such a whooly discipline. In fact, A, B, C is how the gading services evaluated the coins, from the earliest years of PCGS and NGC, according to Scott Traverse, who's been writing that in his Survival Manual since the early 1990s. CAC is breaking down the grading service opinion a little further.

 

[BillJones]

1904 $20s are so plentiful that gems have to be better than other dates to get the grade, but some squeak through regardless.

 

Again, my experience has been that the more scarce and expensive coins are given the least latitude and the plentiful 1904 $20 Libs are graded more liberally. YMMV

 

That has been my experience as well, but it's not easy to get the common date 1904 double eagles in MS-65 holders because the price does jump over $1,000. PCGS has graded 30,485, 1904 $20 gold coins in MS-64, but just 4,285 in MS-65. In MS-66 the figure is only 166 and there are only 2 in MS-67. That's why the Gray Sheet bid is MS-67 is $52,500.

[BillJones]

I suspect that most dealers chosen at random are simply not sofisticated enough graders to attempt assigning the exact grade within a grade.

 

When I was dealer running through boxes at the shows, it was either "up" or "down." After I had a pile of "ups" it came down to price, eye appeal and whether the piece met or was high end for the grade. So I guess I was sort of doing the "ABC" thing.

 

Conversely I've seen well know dealers go through a box, not spend much time at all really looking at the coins, make pile and buy the whole thing. I could not have done that because my mistakes usually came to back to haunt me.

[MarkFeld]

The thing is, I keep reading in various places how, allegedly, dealers have "for years been using A, B, and C to evaluate coins", and wonder where the heck that myth came from? Not long ago, over the course of a few shows, I asked a fair number of dealers at random (probably some twenty or so) about whether they use any such formula, and ZERO of them did. This is why I think it is just so much nonsense to claim that dealers somehow put significant effort into trying to break down mint-state grades down into another 30 levels of resolution. It just plain makes no sense.

 

Now, my impression is that just about everyone does indeed look for "high end" versus "low end" for the grade, and price accordingly. That is common sense. Nobody necessarily wants to sell premium quality material at low-quality pricing levels. But it just doesn't seem at all like reality to claim that there's some sort of secret mystical "A B C within grades" system in use by all the dealers out there.

 

I never heard of such a thing until CAC, or promoters of CAC, announced it.

 

Oh well, maybe I'm just not up to snuff on the inner workings of the important dealers in the market.

 

James, ranking coins "high end" "low end" and in between IS using A, B and C to rank coins. You just won an argument against yourself.

[James_OldeTowne]

The thing is, I keep reading in various places how, allegedly, dealers have "for years been using A, B, and C to evaluate coins", and wonder where the heck that myth came from? Not long ago, over the course of a few shows, I asked a fair number of dealers at random (probably some twenty or so) about whether they use any such formula, and ZERO of them did. This is why I think it is just so much nonsense to claim that dealers somehow put significant effort into trying to break down mint-state grades down into another 30 levels of resolution. It just plain makes no sense.

 

Now, my impression is that just about everyone does indeed look for "high end" versus "low end" for the grade, and price accordingly. That is common sense. Nobody necessarily wants to sell premium quality material at low-quality pricing levels. But it just doesn't seem at all like reality to claim that there's some sort of secret mystical "A B C within grades" system in use by all the dealers out there.

 

I never heard of such a thing until CAC, or promoters of CAC, announced it.

 

Oh well, maybe I'm just not up to snuff on the inner workings of the important dealers in the market.

 

James, ranking coins "high end" "low end" and in between IS using A, B and C to rank coins. You just won an argument against yourself.

Ha! You wish! Because actually, I prefer to use the letters "K", "epsilon", and "double-left R" in my evaluations!

 

 

I have heard that the really good graders and crack out artists can make grade determinations down to 1/10 of a grade, again, based on what criteria? On any given coin you have many, many factors that go in to assigning a certain grade level, certain factors have priority.

I wouldn't believe that even for 1/10 of a second. What crackout specialists do (and Yes, I know probably most of them) is pick out coins with one of two characteristics; either it has a CHANCE of upgrading given enough resubmissions, OR it can be "improved" enough to get a higher grade.

 

The crackout people have no particularly superior grading skills overall (in fact, some of them are rather mediocre graders), but they do have the ability to recognize and avoid coins already in coffins. The crackout game comes down to a matter of odds, not a matter of increased grading precision.

[jom]

The crackout people have no particularly superior grading skills overall (in fact, some of them are rather mediocre graders), but they do have the ability to recognize and avoid coins already in coffins. The crackout game comes down to a matter of odds, not a matter of increased grading precision.

 

I still can't believe there really is such as thing as "precision" in coin grading to begin with. Not when the overall process of grading itself has a whole lot of subjectivity to it.

 

In science and engineering for example you simply cannot have a process with high precision when the accuracy of your "measurement" is all over the place. Precision in that context is meaningless. And I can assure you that coin grading with it's high subjectivity has a tendency to be "all over the place".

 

It's like trying to measure the length of an automobile using a ruler with 1/16 inch steps. However, the car is going by you at 70 mph. Does the 1/16 inch step ruler really help you?

 

jom

[coinman1794]

The thing is, I keep reading in various places how, allegedly, dealers have "for years been using A, B, and C to evaluate coins", and wonder where the heck that myth came from? Not long ago, over the course of a few shows, I asked a fair number of dealers at random (probably some twenty or so) about whether they use any such formula, and ZERO of them did. This is why I think it is just so much nonsense to claim that dealers somehow put significant effort into trying to break down mint-state grades down into another 30 levels of resolution. It just plain makes no sense.

 

Now, my impression is that just about everyone does indeed look for "high end" versus "low end" for the grade, and price accordingly. That is common sense. Nobody necessarily wants to sell premium quality material at low-quality pricing levels. But it just doesn't seem at all like reality to claim that there's some sort of secret mystical "A B C within grades" system in use by all the dealers out there.

 

I never heard of such a thing until CAC, or promoters of CAC, announced it.

 

Oh well, maybe I'm just not up to snuff on the inner workings of the important dealers in the market.

 

James, ranking coins "high end" "low end" and in between IS using A, B and C to rank coins. You just won an argument against yourself.

Ha! You wish! Because actually, I prefer to use the letters "K", "epsilon", and "double-left R" in my evaluations!

 

 

I have heard that the really good graders and crack out artists can make grade determinations down to 1/10 of a grade, again, based on what criteria? On any given coin you have many, many factors that go in to assigning a certain grade level, certain factors have priority.

I wouldn't believe that even for 1/10 of a second. What crackout specialists do (and Yes, I know probably most of them) is pick out coins with one of two characteristics; either it has a CHANCE of upgrading given enough resubmissions, OR it can be "improved" enough to get a higher grade.

 

The crackout people have no particularly superior grading skills overall (in fact, some of them are rather mediocre graders), but they do have the ability to recognize and avoid coins already in coffins. The crackout game comes down to a matter of odds, not a matter of increased grading precision.

 

In many ways, you are right that grading is not precise enough to measure in the 10ths of grades. However, I find that the best approach to resubmission is to know the standards for yourself, taking nothing for granted, and resubmit your coin until it grades the way you believe it should have graded, in the first place. Provided you know the ins and outs of grading, you will achieve the desired grade, eventually. This is more about knowledge than luck, because, if your coin does not have the potential you think it does, it will never grade as desired, regardless of how many times you submit it.

[BillJones]

This is more about knowledge than luck, because, if your coin does not have the potential you think it does, it will never grade as desired, regardless of how many times you submit it.

 

Oh I don't know about that. When I was getting my collection done, and a couple times when I was dealer, I got some "gifts" (over graded coins). The trouble is I got some kicks in the butt too, mostly from unwarranted body bags. It seems like every submission had to have at one body bag whether you deserve it or not.

[coinman1794]

This is more about knowledge than luck, because, if your coin does not have the potential you think it does, it will never grade as desired, regardless of how many times you submit it.

 

Oh I don't know about that. When I was getting my collection done, and a couple times when I was dealer, I got some "gifts" (over graded coins). The trouble is I got some kicks in the butt too, mostly from unwarranted body bags. It seems like every submission had to have at one body bag whether you deserve it or not.

 

Surprise upgrades (or downgrades) that do not seem to fit the coin are not what I was talking about. "Gift grades" happen, but they cannot be predicted because they are, by definition, not correct. I'm talking about having the coin grade at its appropriate grade. The bottom line is that I don't send coins in randomly hoping that the graders screw something up so I get a windfall. You would go insane trying to play that game (or broke if that's your business model) because it's not rational, predictable, repeatable.

[James_OldeTowne]

I find that the best approach to resubmission is to know the standards for yourself, taking nothing for granted, and resubmit your coin until it grades the way you believe it should have graded, in the first place. Provided you know the ins and outs of grading, you will achieve the desired grade, eventually. This is more about knowledge than luck, because, if your coin does not have the potential you think it does, it will never grade as desired, regardless of how many times you submit it.

Yep, as you imply that process works to some extent, but eventually a coin that's been bumped up enough times reaches it's theoretical maximum grade. Then, the slab it's in becomes what we call its "coffin". The coin is in its final resting place.

[coinman1794]

I often send coins to be downgraded, James