IS IT JUST ME? OR Does the "Little Guy" get less here. posted by Castronova

[CSJournals-migration]

The Law of Averages, The Census and the "Little Guy"

 

I have been submitting coins to NGC since 2008 and pretty much backed away in 2011, into 2012, as far as the quantity and frequency of coins I send their way. This mainly due to the fact I never seem to be in the running for top grade coins, regardless of what I submit. I just got back an ER 4 coin Lunar typeset and of course, there's a token "70." for my troubles, but what always seems to surface is that all my "69's" are orphans or close to it in their census of that coin. 21 pf70s.....1 PF69.. guess who owns the 69. This is a mathematical anomoly and I'll bet whoever submitted 21 of the same coin and got 21 PF70's must be elated. Now of course someone has to get 69s, not all coins fit that criteria, but... If I send 6 different coins and get 1 70, I'm okay with that. I'm not okay always being the guy that gets a 69 when the run is predominantly grading out at 70 and its obvious that I don't rate enough as a customer to carry, or be afforded the same treatment as the guy across the street. There is bias and subjective elements at work here that leave me realizing I'm just fodder at some point. Which is why I only send in a small amount for grading, as I am predisposed to knowing the results and I'm never far off in assuming that whatever I send in, will get passed off over to the "ho-hum" section because I'm small potatoes, dollar for dollar. They must think we're stupid. As a collector its at worst, dissapointing but moreover, as an ordinary person, its almost offensive. They care about as much for me as I do for them; anyone want to counter the allegory feel free to tell me I'm way off, but you'll be hard-pressed to prove it. Hope your sensibilities see the truth in what I'm saying here..

 

See more journals by Castronova

[Six Mile Rick]

Castronova,

I believe if you look hard at the coins you get with the lower grades you will find a lesson to learn on grading. I have sent in quite a few coins and actually have 31 at NGC right now. With the grades I search the coins to see why the low grade was awarded and then I look for those problems before I send in more coins. With the first few submissions marked as NGC grading courses. If studied very well your grades will improve later on. Wow ---- when you do finally figure out how to pick PF70's NOT PF69's let me in on your secret!!

 

Rick

[Crruisercharlie]

Well brother- I'm there. Stopped submitting a while back. Got tired of them taking my money and then not encapsulating coins, sending them back as scratched cleaned etc. when they were straight from proof and mint sets. Broke out 2 high grade PCGS 1981S T2 SBAs and submitted them. I expected they might come back a grade lower (hoped not) and could live with that. What I didn't expect was for them to come 1 and 2 grades lower TYPE 1 COINS. My daughter even asked if they had switched coins on me. Resubmitted the coins and they came back the same. it was then I decided to stop submitting. Just as easy and sometime a lot cheaper to ebay it. I really think it's too bad because back in 2000 when I first started collecting certified coins I decided to go exclusively NGC. I really enjoy the Registry. Wrote a note along the "little guy" theme to them after my last submission Maybe if my name was Barry C or something I'd do better.

[Six Mile Rick]

Broke out 2 high grade PCGS 1981S T2 SBAs and submitted them. I expected they might come back a grade lower (hoped not) and could live with that. What I didn't expect was for them to come 1 and 2 grades lower TYPE 1 COINS. My daughter even asked if they had switched coins on me. Resubmitted the coins and they came back the same.

 

Your best bet to acquire the T2 would be submit it back to PCGS. I have found that NGC is very objective on die wear timing. I have received a few coins back that were varieties sent in and returned back with -- TOO EARLY IN DIE STAGE. Understand that this will protect NGC and any buyers of your coins in the future. Looks like you actually purchased a Type 1 in a PCGS slab that was mistakenly given a Type 2 observation( PCGS compared to NGC die stage timing). More than likely you were borderline in the die stage for either side.

 

Rick

[CBC]

NGC does make mistakes, too. I recently submitted a NGC MS-64 Walking Liberty for Variety Plus attribution as a 1934-D "Small D". It came back in the original NGC slab with a sticker attached that said "Strike Doubling". It took three e-mails for them to even acknowledge their error (they kept insisting it was strike doubling), then another two weeks to send it back in and get the correct attribution.

[TD Henson]

Couple of comments here -

 

Likely the phenomenon you are experiencing with proof coins is because dealers are submitting a hundred coins with their dealer privileges asking that only PF 70 coins be encapsulated and return the rest. Hence the reason the pop reports look "lopsided" to you.

 

The other issue is that we as collectors look at far too few coins to really find the gems. I used to do this all the time too - force the grade and be disappointed in the outcome.

 

I submit a lot of MS Roosevelt Modern Dimes and as such have been keeping good notes for the past three or so years about my findings. I have records for 6,576 dimes I've reviewed from Mint Sets and OBW rolls. Out of this group I kept 118 dimes for further study. That's a paltry 1.79% keeper to junk ratio.

 

Out of this 118 dimes - I've submitted 108 for grading. My average numerical grade is 66.7 and of these 108 graded dimes a mere 17 have made MS 68 status and zero have made it to MS 69. So, 17 coins out of 6,576 dimes = a gem grade percentage of .00258%.

 

My point is an OBW roll has a .00258% chance of containing a gem grade full torch dime. I'll state that another way by saying dimes have a 1 in 400 chance of being MS 68 FT. So, one would have to peruse at least 8 OBW rolls or 400 mint sets to find that one elusive gem. Depending on die condition this can go up or down.

 

If it were easy everyone would do it and the gems would have no value. One last parting comment - I've seen little change from year to year.

 

My "dimes" worth of thoughts.

 

Todd

[Six Mile Rick]

Couple of comments here -

My "dimes" worth of thoughts.

 

Todd

 

Todd,

WOW!!!! That is a pretty good account of records that you kept on your venture of searches. I would say very correct to the count for sure!! The nice coins are surely out there but you are not going to find them by purchasing 5 sets or 2 rolls.

 

Rick

[coinsandmedals]

I would also have to disagree to this point of view, just because you submit a small number of coins doesn't mean that NGC will grade coins more conservatively or without the same regard as if you sent in a large amount of coins. I usually don't submit many coins to NGC maybe 100 coins a year at max and I really have to work to do that. As some have already pointed out we all look at o many coins, personally I do what I think many of the more successful submitters do. I look at my coins multiple times before I submit, and I compare them to already graded examples of the same year. I make sure I know what the technical merit of the coin is and pay no attention to value base don grade or what the population report says. To further back my point I had submitted awhile back a group of proof Jefferson nickels (1940, and 1938) as well as a few other proofs from the same time period. I studied these coins extensively and put a lot of emphasis at comparing it to already graded coins of the same year and type. I must have done this for about three weeks off and on assessing the coin and then reassessing the coin after a period of time. I received the results that I expected, the 1938 graded a 67 and the 1940 (actually turned out to be a rev of 38) graded a 67 I had them both estimated at a 66+ and the other coins I had on the invoice all averaged within one grade point. Basically you don't have to submit X amount of coins to get the grades you want, you just have to educate yourself and take the time needed to explore every aspect of the coins technical merit.

 

Edited to correct spelling issues.