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NGC photo vision service
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46 posts in this topic

Does anyone have an example of what the photo vision looks like that they are willing to share?  I have a couple of coins I'd like to submit and am wondering if the $8 is worth the price.  In the past I have mostly used Mark Goodman for pictures, and while I consider him the very best if NGC does a good job I might opt for that on these to save the extra shipping costs.

Edited by Coinbuf
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This is not one of my attractive coins - I just had it in for grading and they ran a special introductory offer for Photo Vision. I wanted to test it out to see the outcome. They send you the individual photos and the combined. 

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Edited by Zebo
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It is very close. I do not think it picks up all of the luster, however. I do like the photos. The combined photo for the 1880 S is a little blurry. That wasn't the case with the others that I have. They were all sharp. One thing to know is that they will photograph all of the coins on the submission form - you cannot, or at least you couldn't then, pick the ones you wanted photographed. Here is another one that isn't in the greatest shape.

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Edited by Zebo
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Thanks for the additional pics @Zeboit has helped me decide to at least try the service on a few of the coins I want to send in.  I am aware of the slab pics that NGC takes, I bought a coin earlier this year and when I added it to my inventory those automatically loaded.  Also not bad for slab shots but certainly not nice high res pics either. 

Edited by Coinbuf
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If you are sending in silver or copper - please let me know how you think the photos came out. I haven't seen examples of those @coinbuf. I only wish they came out with this service earlier - so I could have had all of my collection photographed before stabbing. 

Edited by Zebo
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I am also curious how silver looks. At that other TPG, many I've looked at, specifically Canada George VI 50c Specimen coins, make the coins look brown. My profile image is one such coin. In hand it is highly reflective with no hint of toning or color other than silver, but you sure wouldn't know from their imaging. The NGC sample 1920 half in the link above looks good, but I'm curious what a proof or specimen coin looks like - i.e. something with mirror surfaces. (I am considering a resubmit/crossover and would like the imaging done if it doesn't turn out brown!)

Edited by kbbpll
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I have a very small group consisting of some copper (toned and bright red) and a couple of bright untoned silver coins so I'll update this thread when I have the pics, will be interesting to see how these turn out.

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NGC Photovision I feel are more realistic than PCGS true view. The true view enhances/juices the pic.......I have seen and owned true viewed coins and when I got them in person, I was disappointed. Coinbuf, there are some members here that hopefully see your request and should post more photovision pictures.

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Mailed in my submission on Fri, very small group of only 7 coins but did ask for photos of all seven.  I'm assuming that photos will only be taken of the coins that are slabbed so I'll update with the photos once I receive them.  Bty is it too early to check my submission status.  :devil:

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This is where NGC could one-up the competition. I would love to be able to scroll through everything imaged of a specific coin/date/grade. Right now I seem to be limited to Heritage auction archives in order to easily see many examples of a coin in a particular grade, for example.

Edited by kbbpll
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Well as the competition already does this it would not "one-up" them; however it would be a very useful tool and a welcome enhancement that certainly could bring more business to the photo side of the company.

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28 minutes ago, Coinbuf said:

Well as the competition already does this it would not "one-up" them; however it would be a very useful tool and a welcome enhancement that certainly could bring more business to the photo side of the company.

Maybe I need some help then, because I've been on that site a lot. Is there really a place to look up all their images of a specific coin/date/ and/or grade? For a specific coin in their price guide, yes, you can see 3 or so images of top grades. The auctions section under each grade in the price guide is marginally useful to look up images in a particular grade, but clicking all the way through to the auction lot is a pain, and the images are not consistent with the TPG images (although occasionally the auction has the TPG image). Their online grading resource is also marginally useful, but there you only get one coin in each grade.

At least on Heritage I can search for something like "1901-S 10c AU58", but I'm limited to what they may have sold. Of course on a TPG site, I'd be limited to what they photographed, but some way of searching all of them would be useful. Again, perhaps I'm not aware of such a capability at the competition.

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I may have misunderstood you, I assumed that you would only be searching for that TPG's graded coins.  No TPG is going to place the competition's photos (it would actually be a copyright infringement to do so) on their website; no way no how; those photos belong to and are the property of the TPG that took them.  ATS has a feature that allows you to see as many photos as are currently available on their site, once you click on a date/mm you will see the top 1-3 and have the option to click on view more to see others.  Its sad that the feature was recently gutted due to a single unhappy major dealer who saw how easy it was to id the gradeflation issue using the feature and screamed about how it was killing business.  More photos are being populated as they are taken but steps have been put in place so astute viewers cannot see the gradeflation as before.

 

If you want to search across multiple TPG's then Heritage is really the best choice, you can also use the recent auction archives both here and ATS which will show several auction sites such as Heritage, Ebay, Stacks, and one other I think.  The only one not in those records is GC, Ian has said that he prefers to not share his sales records at this time.

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Thanks, I must have been blind this whole time. "View more images" is there. I think my problem is that I've spent most of my time on there with world coins, through population report. "View a registry set that requires this coin" is where "view more images" is on the US price guide.

No, I did not mean that they should display other TPG's images, obviously that could never happen. Just a searchable repository for that TPG.

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On 10/31/2019 at 7:49 AM, kbbpll said:

This is where NGC could one-up the competition. I would love to be able to scroll through everything imaged of a specific coin/date/grade. Right now I seem to be limited to Heritage auction archives in order to easily see many examples of a coin in a particular grade, for example.

I agree, I wish I could look at other pictures of a certain coin.

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On 10/31/2019 at 5:19 PM, Coinbuf said:

 Its sad that the feature was recently gutted due to a single unhappy major dealer who saw how easy it was to id the gradeflation issue using the feature and screamed about how it was killing business.  More photos are being populated as they are taken but steps have been put in place so astute viewers cannot see the gradeflation as before.

Can you elaborate a bit on this, or point me to a thread about it?

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52 minutes ago, tejas1836 said:

Thank you. 

Although I have never bought a coin from Legend, I have read enough of Laura Sperber's writings to not be at all surprised to find out that she was in favor of this, even though PCGS claims that it was done for different reasons. The way that she talks down to the average collector has always amazed me.

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Yes, thanks. That was a most interesting discussion over there. Perhaps NGC is being careful because of it. My ignorance of that feature might have been because I was most active over there during a time when it was removed. (When was it reinstated, anyway?).

Back to the original discussion, I would still like to see a Photo Vision of a silver specimen or proof coin, to see how it turns out with mirror surfaces.

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Thanks for providing that link @tejas1836there have been multiple threads ats in the past where someone had used coinfacts to show where a coin had upgraded, then upgraded again, and at times a third upgrade many times within a very short timeframe.  I suspect that there were others but Laura was the vocial one that posted how it was bad for the hobby.  IMO she was mad because some of the big registry buyers were unhappy about the constant upgrades and the subsequent repurchases to stay on top of the registry list when it was clear that coins were being moved up in grade very rapidly.   Very soon after all that, all but the top three pop coin images were deleted from coin facts, gutting all the other images so that folks couldn't continue to point out the rampant gradeflation.  Many believed it was in response to the complaints, I suspect that and also because it was embarrassing to the TPG ats.  As new coins are graded and imaged the library of photos is being repopulated but the old images and information is gone for good.

 

My small submission is at NGC now which does include one high grade silver coin (a crossover attempt which is rare for me) and I'll update this thread with the photos that I receive.  However I have no proofs in the group.

Edited by Coinbuf
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I had submitted two Soho proof copper coins to NGC as a "special" submission. I just got off the phone with Mr. Heller, and it appears they are in the final stages of the process! I thought I had requested photovision for this submission, but I checked internet imaging as this is a somewhat complicated request. I will post the images here when I get them. I am not sure what to expect for the internet imaging service. I wonder how different it is from the cert verification picture.  

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