Shouldn't PCGS & NGC be required to certify their certifiers?

[Lucky One]

I'd like to ask a question to the collecting community: With all due respect to the professionals and scholars, should graders ad finalizers at the grading services be required to be certified in the series they grade?

 

I know it seems like a funny question, but a brain surgeon isn't qualified to perform heart surgery, or even foot surgery for that matter, so why should a Lincoln cent expert be allowed to grade Morgan dollars and bust halves, or vice versa?

 

What I'm suggesting is that there are far too many coins in slabs that the graders obviously didn't understand and that caused an erroneous grade to be issued. The evidence is on every bourse floor, in every dealer's inventory, in every collector's collection, so it obviously can not be denied.

 

How can a coin with 100% full mint luster be graded XF40, or even lower? As a collector who has studied bust halves I can tell you that many sunken dies produced bust halves with very poor central detail, and the silver that didn't get struck up into the die would obviously look just like the rough planchet, so to the untrained and uneducated eye, it looks like wear and gets a circulated designation based on not the amount of wear (since there actually was none) but on the lack of detail where the coin didn't strike up. An inexperienced grader wouldn't know this, couldn't comprehend it because they had no prior experience with it. I could offer ten more easy examples in other series but you get the point.

 

For the past several years I have been collecting and studying liberty half eagles and I have run into the exact same phenomenom again- coins that have striking or die anomolies are misgraded everywhere I look and I see as many AU coins in mint state slabs as mint state coins in AU slabs as well as the same kinds of mistakes that I described for the bust halves.

 

In short, would you agree it is time to certify the certifiers? These companies make huge amounts of money for what is actually a very quick review so why shouldn't they be required to be experts at what they are certifying?

 

Don't be shy- please share your thoughts and ideas with the rest of us...

[RWB]

Who would certify them as competent?

[Lucky One]

Who would certify them as competent?

 

the experienced professionals in each field and the true scholars of course. I posted this as serious concern to all of us. You wouldn't want your mother to get stuck with bad slabs hawked by seemingly good dealers, right?

[RWB]

You lost me on that....There is no independent organization to certify coin graders or authenticators. The companies that sell these services guarantee their work, but the customer has no options about which individual performs the authentication or grading.

 

What do coin sellers have to do with it?

[e1cnr]

no, but maybe there should be certifiers for a series to put a sticker on the slab to certify the grading company got it right...

[Walkerfan]

The TPGS already choose the most experienced individuals and true scholars that are available to grade. They don't hire just anyone.

[Lucky One]

no, but maybe there should be certifiers for a series to put a sticker on the slab to certify the grading company got it right...

 

 

this is another good idea, but then our slabs will start looking like NASCAR racecars with logos all over them...

[TheMightyDuke]

Looks like they forgot to lock the door again.....

[Lucky One]

You lost me on that....There is no independent organization to certify coin graders or authenticators. The companies that sell these services guarantee their work, but the customer has no options about which individual performs the authentication or grading.

 

What do coin sellers have to do with it?

 

the point was obviously lost on you, but when you think it out, someone is going to resell those bad slabs, the ones that were graded by people unqualified to grade them. If your mother saw a late night coin hawking show on satellite and decided to buy slabs, she likely wouldn;t know a good slab from a bad one, would she? So I ask again, would you rather eliminate these problems by allowing only very experienced numismatists to grade each series or allow the problem to propagate more slabs that someone close to you could get burnt on?

 

I'm not disparaging the professional opinion makers, I'm only asking that they be qualified to give the opinion in every instance in the first place...

[Lucky One]

The TPGS already choose the most experienced individuals and true scholars that are available to grade. They don't hire just anyone.

 

 

and I say that isn't good enough, based on fifty years experience and thirty years of viewing and buying slabbed coins. Sure they don't hire just anyone, but they sure can't be having them qualified on each series since there are sooooo many discrepancies in grading in their slabs on the market today. Are you suggesting that there aren't a lot of mistakes in major brand slabs floating around? Again, I'm not blaming humans for making mistakes, I'm blaming unqualified humans for making mstakes that could have been prevented by abstaining from grading something that they obviously didnt understand when they graded it...

 

[Lucky One]

Who would certify them as competent?

 

since we don't need another government bureaucracy, it should be a responsibility of the corporations who employ the graders, at least I would think. I'm sure we should be able to trust the fine people who run these big corporations to employ only qualified individuals with many years of experience in their field to do these certifications- how hard can it be? And afterall, would you want a specialist in early copper to grade your gem Barbers? A specialist in modern proofs to grade your finest colonials?

[Lucky One]

Looks like they forgot to lock the door again.....

 

and then there's always that one guy who sits over in the corner with the closed mind taking potshots at thse who try to inspire serious thought... sigh

[BillJones]

The expertise that you would like the certifiers to have is a very valuable commodity. In the years I've been a collector, which now exceeds 55, I've seen very few people who had the ability to grade by surfaces and assign proper grades that reflect pricing issues. Most collectors and a more dealers than you would like know are lucky if they can apply the grading standards that are published in the ANA grading guide. People who have such talents command high levels of compensation. How much could they earn as a top dealer or cataloger versus how much can they earn going blind in a third party grading company room?

 

Then you add another factor. How good a job can you do when you are expected to grade large numbers of coins in a day's time? There is a big difference between culling though coins in a dealers' box between the properly graded and improperly grading items, and assigning grades with + and - factors taken into consideration.

 

The final point is, like it or not, slab grades have to do with market grades, and there is no way to get around it. I don't believe that there can be such a thing as an MS-67 graded coin that is poorly struck. That, to me, is an oxymoron. A poorly struck, well preserved coin is not worth as much as a well struck, well preserved coin, except to some of those who collect die states. To most people if you can't see as much detail, the coin is not worth as much regardless why the detail is missing.

 

You can talk about writing a long description on a slab, but in the end most people are going to ignore it. Many years ago Brown and Dunn, who wrote one of the first grading guides, developed a set of codes to go along with their grades. It was published in a later edition of their book. Nobody used them, and the fact that few people here have ever heard of them proves my point.

 

[Lucky One]

The expertise that you would like the certifiers to have is a very valuable commodity. In the years I've been a collector, which now exceeds 55, I've seen very few people who had the ability to grade by surfaces and assign proper grades that reflect pricing issues. Most collectors and a more dealers than you would like know are lucky if they can apply the grading standards that are published in the ANA grading guide. People who have such talents command high levels of compensation. How much could they earn as a top dealer or cataloger versus how much can they earn going blind in a third party grading company room?

 

Then you add another factor. How good a job can you do when you are expected to grade large numbers of coins in a day's time? There is a big difference between culling though coins in a dealers' box between the properly graded and improperly grading items, and assigning grades with + and - factors taken into consideration.

 

The final point is, like it or not, slab grades have to do with market grades, and there is no way to get around it. I don't believe that there can be such a thing as an MS-67 graded coin that is poorly struck. That, to me, is an oxymoron. A poorly struck, well preserved coin is not worth as much as a well struck, well preserved coin, except to some of those who collect die states. To most people if you can't see as much detail, the coin is not worth as much regardless why the detail is missing.

 

You can talk about writing a long description on a slab, but in the end most people are going to ignore it. Many years ago Brown and Dunn, who wrote one of the first grading guides, developed a set of codes to go along with their grades. It was published in a later edition of their book. Nobody used them, and the fact that few people here have ever heard of them proves my point.

 

Respect for your fifty five years, in my fiftieth here my friend. Wow, you make a lot of good points, all that support my conclusion that we need to certify the certifiers.

 

OK, we'll start with value of experience from the other side of the coin. How many coins have PCGS and NGC claim to have graded? What is the average cost of each grade? Simple math tells us that they can afford it, and good moral and ethical scrutiny says they should be obligated to do so. They have graded 60 million coins in thirty years combined, with a total value of about sixty BILLION dollars. At an average of $25 per coin, not to mention fees associated, they took in probably much more than one and a half BILLION dollars over that time. I would love to see their labor costs for that cool billion and a half in revenues. But more compelling an argument is the fact that granny could easily get burnt on bad coins in good holders because so many unprepared or just plain incompetent (this is meant in the professional sense, not as an insult) to grade some of the series they are asked to grade. To answer the last part of your point- maybe they should form a graders union, or maybe just admit they are in over their heads and abstain, their efforts more valueable in cataloging what they do know.

 

To your second point- quality control is wprthless if we push our professional graders like truck drivers. Maybe certain studies should be done on human endurance and accuracy levels and then standards made and applied. But for sure, nothing will be done of we don;t discuss the problems in public with all input possible from all sides.

 

As for labeling- I beg to differ that this is not true. First, if you look at a slab, a lot of real estate was left for labeling, about a third of the slab is devoted to the label compartment. Both sides should be utilized, with description of condition on the back and grade on the front as it is now so that they are still uniform in appearance. A one or two sentence description in standardized language would easily convey every major problem you would need to disclose to make it's true value apparent to even the most ignorant (meaning unknowledgeable, not meant to insult) buyers. What good are today's details graded slabs if they say "repaired" but don't say what the repair is or where it's at? What good is "improperly cleaned" if it says that for the lightest of cleanings with good eye appeal as well as the worst looking whizzed and polished piece of junk? I can show you many examples of both, so a specific description of the condition of the coin would solve this problem, would it not?

 

The fact remains, even after all the debate over the years, that even major name brand slabs can be misleading and cost their buyers great loss and heartache, so why not clean it up a bit and make it fair for those it was promised to protect- those who don't know what is in the slab? In reality, the only people who can logically get burnt by a bad slab are those who need to rely on the label on that slab- the ignorant.

 

I rest my case.

 

 

 

references:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Coin_Grading_Service

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numismatic_Guaranty_Corporation

[AHFreak]

Hey LuckyOne, my first question is if you are as proficient in grading as you imply, why arent you one of the professionals who does it? -From what I've read, both major TPG's could use more expert graders.

Second, how much are you willing to pay to have a coin certified? Are you prepared for the cost of certification to go up considerably? That's what would happen if what you are suggesting were implemented, and many think the cost is already high enough. The coins you are talking about are a very very small percentage of coins being submitted so when a company hires the guy who has devoted his life to one series, how much would they need to pay that guy, and what does that guy do when the other 99% of coins being submitted aren't his "specialty", but are the only coins to be graded? I think you are extremely unrealistic in your expectation of what these grading companies should or should not do.

 

 

[AHFreak]

No way they average $25 per coin. .. not even in the ball park.

 

80% of coins submitted are moderns, show me who charges $25 for a modern coin? Then on top of that the majority of coins that are being certified get submitted by the biggest dealers, dealers who pay bulk rate discounts. We are talking 4-8 bucks per coin in many many cases.

 

 

Again LuckOne, very unrealistic. I respect your 50 some odd years of experience in whatever series you have it in, but what about simple business experience?

[BillJones]

I am not willing to pay the grading services any more to get coins graded, especially when you have to send the same coin in more than once so that they get right. I paid $125 to get my 1793 Chain Cent graded. I could have done myself in less than 5 minutes, but my opinion is "conjecture." The TPS is "law" at least to some people.

 

Why have I never been a prefessional grader? A couple of reasons. First I have no desire to get burnt out in this hobby, and that's what would happen to me. Second, I would not do the job fast enough for them. It takes time to spot every problem and catch every mark. That is part of reason why some mistakes slip through, which explains why CAC exists. But don't get me started, because I'm not a huge CAC fan, which gets other people upset.

 

As for the need to have experts for each series, I find that unnecessary. I think I can grade everything in the American series pretty well, including all the tokens and medals for which there not grading guides. After while you get know what the surfaces and design characteristics are. It takes years and some talent for most people, but it can be done.

 

Now if you have spent your whole life looking at nothing but Morgan dollars, and Walkers, not to demean those series, that is something else. Your experince is not broad enough.

[Davids5104]

a few thoughts...

 

1. I respect opinions on this topic... I only have 10months of collecting....

2. tell me how to describe every problem seen with a VF 45 mercury dime with one or two sentences?

3. Your neurosurgeon focused solely on neurosurgery still kills people. your coin grading specialist with a migraine, or hungry, needing to get three coins done before break still makes mistakes.

4. Medical Specialists are not needed unless things are too complex for internal medicine doctors. Perhaps criteria for when a coin subspecialist could be developed, but not for initial evaluation because it simply would be going too far too soon.

5. Coin collectors (as a rule) are old men, except me, old men are blind, big spaces for labels makes sense to read it. Little interest in seeing that info on the coin, perhaps the website to verify a cert....

6. do not use Wikipedia as your references and think that is good. more importantly, why include references and not point us to what you wanted us to read in the references

 

 

[Lucky One]

Hey LuckyOne, my first question is if you are as proficient in grading as you imply, why arent you one of the professionals who does it? -From what I've read, both major TPG's could use more expert graders.

Second, how much are you willing to pay to have a coin certified? Are you prepared for the cost of certification to go up considerably? That's what would happen if what you are suggesting were implemented, and many think the cost is already high enough. The coins you are talking about are a very very small percentage of coins being submitted so when a company hires the guy who has devoted his life to one series, how much would they need to pay that guy, and what does that guy do when the other 99% of coins being submitted aren't his "specialty", but are the only coins to be graded? I think you are extremely unrealistic in your expectation of what these grading companies should or should not do.

 

 

First, I'm twice retired and have no desire to work for a supercorp. Second, Heritage tried to recruit me as I was contemplating leaving my Navy career back in the late 1980's but I chose to start my own business rather than just be a pawn in a big company. It just isn't my bag, seems like a boring 9 to 5 job.

 

But if you are questioning my grading knowledge and ability I can understand, the person suggesting there are problems better be qulified to make the charges, so a short bio: I grew up trudging from one coin shop to the next in a loop I made in Pittsburgh as a kid. They were all old time dealers and in those days dealers were more into teaching than selling, the selling came as a by-product of the educationl process. The all took me under their wing and taught me every trick you can imagine that goes on in the back room or bathroom of a coin shop. More importantly, they taught me how to grade and discern condition, and that was my strong suit. Since I am a perfectionist by nature, I have a very discriminating eye (the reason Heritage tried to recruit me), so I reject anything that seriously lowers a coins eye appeal. Being so discriminating moderates my natural inclination to grade my coins higher, and it shows in my submissions- I usually get twice as many back graded higher than lower than I expected. Since my experience with NGC and PCGS has been virtually all positive for the past thirty years I personally believe I am on par with them. That may sound arrogant but real world results dictate.

 

To address you second point, the question should be why would anyone want to pay a professional fee for less than a professional opinion? Again, what good is an expert in modern coinage grading colonials or early coinage? What good is an expert in any field grading one that he is not well aquainted with and has no real world experience with? As a person who has disected one series after another in my long personal numismatic career, I can say with great conviction that no bust half or early gold piece should ever be 'professionally certified' by anyone but a profesional in that series, and a lfelong professional in each field should be the finalizer no matter wh the graders are. Just my opinion, I love hearing other's thoughts. As for how many series each grader can be qualifieed in- I am the perfect example. By the prime age of 30 I had already covered a dozen series with some degree of confidence and authority. Today I can claim twice as many. I am proficient at several, very good at the rest. Am I that rare? My bet is no, but then again, no one is going to come knocking on my door since I never put myself out there. It takes a special kind of person, one who can tolerate the long hours of nothingness. I'm a doer, can't sit idle like that for long, drives me nuts. All respect to those who can brave it though. But the point here is that IF they recruited at major shows for expert non-professionals they might find the talent and experience to get the job done right. Can you disagree with that? We can't get done what we don't try. As for your argument that a specialist in ANY series would go waiting for work- have you seen the size of these grading factories? PCGS has 60,000 square feet just ine the US! Have you seen the volume they are mving through these facilities? A million coins a year at each facility. I doubt anyone would go waiting, and with all that experience, as a supervisor at a plant like this I would do exactly what I did in the Navy- cross-train everyone who showed the talent so that they were more versatile in the scheduling. There is a solution to ANY problem, and as a technician I have proved that almost every time I ever took on a problem. (some problems defy reality or a viable solution, the universe is fallable) And where dd I say any grader should devote his life to one series? I said the certifiers should be certified in the coins that they are ordered to grade, nothing more, nothing less. Nothing is stopping any grader from studying and qualifying in any series they want, and if I was in charge, that is what I would promote within my work center. You made good points, I showed you a way around it and the means to do it. Tens of millions of dollars per year in revenues should easily enable everything I've laid out in this debate. The only thing missing is the will to do it...

[Lucky One]

No way they average $25 per coin. .. not even in the ball park.

 

80% of coins submitted are moderns, show me who charges $25 for a modern coin? Then on top of that the majority of coins that are being certified get submitted by the biggest dealers, dealers who pay bulk rate discounts. We are talking 4-8 bucks per coin in many many cases.

 

 

Again LuckOne, very unrealistic. I respect your 50 some odd years of experience in whatever series you have it in, but what about simple business experience?

 

Fair enough- at age 17 I got a job working in a small business in the wholesale district of Pittsburgh. By the age of 18 I was managing the place. Fast forward past my Navy career, where I was in a supervisory position for most of my time in and you come to my post-military career. I was forced out because I divorced my wife and kept my two little girls, so faced with working for a big military contractor, I chose to open a custom computer building business where I built and repaired custom PCs for business and individuals for fifteen years. I was broke when I started it, refused to borrow a dime to get it on it's feet and managed to turn it into a million dollar a year business within a few years. I sold it in the fifth year and got a pretty penny for it. Does this qualify me in your mind? Half way throuhg the computer business my wife wanted her own store, so I bought a larger building and split it in tow for her. She sold diamond jewelry so I learned the craft and began making custom diamond jewelry in my down time. That business was very profitable as well and it helped finance my latest incursion into the liberty half eagle series. I agree with your scrutiny- if someone said they knew better, my first question would be the same as yours.

 

As for your numbers- well, I can't dispute yours any more than you can dispute mine, but I think reality is somewhere between. My bet is that most submissions have been Morgan and peace dollars as well as tons and tons of generic obsolete gold, especially double eagles. They DO cost $25 if I'm not mostaken. But what you aren't taking into account is the higher level submissions that raise the average. If anyone has thoe numbers broken down already, please post them so we can se exactly what the average is. I'm sure a person with the desre and time on his hands could figure out the percentages of each tier and come to a mean cost, I'm just not here to debate that, not important to the question. One thing for sure, they are raking in tens of millions of dollars a year but old problems are still getting swept under the rug. I'm not trying to paint them as villains, just trying to point out the probelms I see. I was afraid I'd ruffle a few professional feathers with this topic but I honestly have no agenda other than making things fair and right...

[Nutmeg Coin]

Do certificates, licenses, up to date test taking, etc. translate into excellence? At least in the physical trades many of the best workers are not licensed for whatever reason, I had a guy doing tree climbing who had been at it for 40 years and he was better than most of the certified show horse arborists. The same thing can easily hold true of the white collar trades, competence, skill, talent, well trained eyeballs that know all the nuances of grading will gain nothing by tests and licenses. % of correlation with the top graders is what they aim at. Supposedly three graders look at every coin and if there is difference of opinion, the finalizer steps in to make the decision. If one, two and three agree, why would they need a fourth person?

[Lucky One]

Do certificates, licenses, up to date test taking, etc. translate into excellence? At least in the physical trades many of the best workers are not licensed for whatever reason, I had a guy doing tree climbing who had been at it for 40 years and he was better than most of the certified show horse arborists. The same thing can easily hold true of the white collar trades, competence, skill, talent, well trained eyeballs that know all the nuances of grading will gain nothing by tests and licenses. % of correlation with the top graders is what they aim at. Supposedly three graders look at every coin and if there is difference of opinion, the finalizer steps in to make the decision. If one, two and three agree, why would they need a fourth person?

 

 

well your last question can be asked with permutations- why do we need three? And if the oerson doing the grading WAS proficient, why would we need a finalizer? Sure, we can argue it any way we wish, but I'm trying to keep on point here- the fact is that they have graded 60 million coins worth about 60 billion dollars over a period of thirty years, and that is only the top two grading services. Out of 60 million coins, if even one tenth of one percent were graded wrong, that means 60,000 overgraded slabs are in circulation today, and who do you think is most likely to buy them? But that is a very rosy estimate since almost all highly technical businesses have a failure rate between 1 and 10%. I remember reading an article years ago when I was still in the PC building business- it was talking about how HP or Compaq or one of the big builders who were my competition had just cleaned up the slack in their manufacturing process and had lowered their defect rate from a whopping 9% to about a third of that. WOW! 9% was considered OK for a long time, at least until it began cutting into profits, and I know it had to- I was contracted to do some of the repairs for them and they paid out the nose to keep customers happy. If my estimate of 1% defect rate in slabbing seems unreasonable, look at other failure rates in every technical industry and you'll see that is just a matter of human nature- people make mistakes even though they think they were perfect. So, if we agree the #1 & #2 slabbers have a failure rate more in line with the norm, there are 600,000 bad slabs on the market today. Food for thought...

 

By the way- to refute your assertion that training and certification don;t drastically improve the product or people involved in the process, take a look at militaries around the world. Those that do train and cross train their pilots and operators to perfecting standards show thte reults on the battlefield every time. He who trains the most has the least flaws, there is absolutely no question about it. But I'm not concerned with those who ARE oroficient, I am concerned that those who are NOT proficient are actually doing a job that they are NOT qualified to do...

[RWB]

Is this the same OP'r who wanted every error separately cataloged? Quite a few structural and cognitive similarities....

[Lucky One]

Is this the same OP'r who wanted every error separately cataloged? Quite a few structural and cognitive similarities....

 

why the snipe? No, and I read it but didn't agree with that person for obvious reasons. We can argue that this isn't important, but I have given several good sound reasons why it is. Any resistance is likely coming from the professionals involved because I can't see why any collector, the person most affected by it, wouldn't want the grading game cleaned up a bit. What I have posted is reasonable and well thought out, and it's time is overdue...

[physics-fan3.14]

I'd like to ask a question to the collecting community: With all due respect to the professionals and scholars, should graders ad finalizers at the grading services be required to be certified in the series they grade?

 

Isn't this what CAC is doing?

[Lucky One]

I'd like to ask a question to the collecting community: With all due respect to the professionals and scholars, should graders ad finalizers at the grading services be required to be certified in the series they grade?

 

Isn't this what CAC is doing?

 

how is that possible- does CAC view every coin slabbed and do they put a description of condition on their label? Again, you missed my point. CAC certifies a certain coin to be in the middle to upper end of the grade assigned, it doesn't tell you if the coin was properly graded (please see previous posts for my reasoning), it is mainly concerned with EYE APPEAL. Again, if a person proficient in modern coinage tried to grade a colonial he'd likely not have a clue what he was doing, there is just too much to know about the way coins were made pre-steam press, and that technology didn;t hit the mint until the mid 1830's and didn't help correct the problems of defective or sinking dies, that requred yet more technology and another two decades, so having a good working knowledge of mint technology and contemporary techniques makes ALL the difference in the world when grading pre-1860 coinage. If the big slabbers only employed people to grade each series that they actually have real world working knowledge and experience in, there woukld be a LOT less erroneous slabs in the marketplace to screw their unknowledgeable buyers out of their hard earned $$$...

[World Colonial]

Professional certifications and licenses are mostly a farce. Their primary purpose is to reduce competition by making it harder for those on the outside to get on the inside. Secondly, to dupe the public with a false of confidence because having one hardly assures that the individual with it is competent. I know this having a CPA and two other industry certifications in my field.

 

The grade on the holder is an opinion and nothing more. Licensing or certifying the graders isn't going to improve its "accuracy".

[DaveG]

The grading services are offering services that are only as good as their market perception, so it's in their interest to have the most knowledgeable people grading coins. For example, as I understand it, they have graders who specialize in ultra modern coins grading ultra modern coins and those who specialize in Morgans grading Morgans, etc.

 

Over the years I've been involved in numismatics, I've met some outstanding graders - some are well known to the community at large and some are only known to a few. I've never met a skilled coin grader who felt that a piece of paper was in any way desirable or necessary - the only pieces of paper related to their grading that they felt added credibility featured images of dead presidents on them.

 

Just because you disagree with their assigned grades (or the standards under which those grades are assigned) doesn't mean the grading services are wrong. I've met expert graders who disagreed with each other on some coins.

 

I've even disagreed with one of the most expert graders working today. He said: "I'd buy this coin at this grade; the hit doesn't bother me." I said: "I wouldn't buy this coin."

 

Some of the people who disagree with the grading services' standards and who have market credibility have, for example, started their own companies to "certify" graded coins.

 

There are also those who specialize in taking action where they disagree with the grading services. I understand the best of the "crack out" specialists do very well indeed.

 

Of course, you are free to offer courses and certificates in grading. I understand that there's a group out in Colorado that already does this, but since coin collecting is not a regulated industry, you're certainly free to start your own effort.

[RWB]

Is this the same OP'r who wanted every error separately cataloged? Quite a few structural and cognitive similarities....

 

why the snipe? No, and I read it but didn't agree with that person for obvious reasons. We can argue that this isn't important, but I have given several good sound reasons why it is. Any resistance is likely coming from the professionals involved because I can't see why any collector, the person most affected by it, wouldn't want the grading game cleaned up a bit. What I have posted is reasonable and well thought out, and it's time is overdue...

 

Simply an observation, nothing more or less.

 

 

 

[MJ]

The grade on the holder is only a starting point when buying or selling.

 

mark