For ancient coins, older than 1500AD, what TPG do you prefer?

Herb_T

ANACS? NCG? Which service do you prefer and why?

Oldhoopster

Not sure if it will influence comments, but you're posting to a board that's owned and operated by PCGS I don't think there is anything in the site rules that prohibits questions like this as long as you don't post anything negative about any TPG. I don't know if my comments have any merit, its just something consider

John Conduitt

PCGS don't grade ancients, so you're safe there. But they do grade medieval hammered coins.

I would think the first question would be around why you're slabbing a hammered coin.

Collecting US coins can often be about obtaining barely-perceptible improvements in grade, since the production process makes modern coins much more uniform. People who collect hammered coins are often more interested in the history. They like nice looking coins, particularly collectors of ancient Greek coins, but the handmade nature of them - and the fact that most have been buried in the ground - means collectors are used to imperfections. Every ancient coin has been 'cleaned'. Many have test cuts or countermarks. The grade doesn't matter if it's historical and looks good.

And many like holding history in their hand - rather than a plastic slab. You don't have to worry so much about fingerprints on something with a stable patina and no flat surfaces. Very many (most?) ancient collectors don't want to buy a slabbed coin, so you're adding inconvenience for them.

The NGC 'ancients' criteria (strike and surface) make more sense than grade, but generally grading doesn't work very well across the hugely diverse hammered coinage - Roman sestertii, British pennies, Spanish cobs, Russian dengas, Celtic staters etc. What is the surface being judged against? Would all pennies of King Stephen of England be rated 1 for strike?

There's also the issue that very many hammered coins are not 'common'. It's common for a variety to be one of a dozen or fewer in existence, and yet not too expensive either. So you're pretty much guaranteed to be 'top pop' with many of them, although there are no population stats for ancients anyway.

And of course, for ancients there's no guarantee of authenticity. Hopefully, the TPG wouldn't grade a coin they thought was fake, but there's no guarantee. So it's no different to the coin passing through the experts at one of the top auction houses.

So the benefits of grading are much reduced for hammered coins, and choosing a TPG is much less important. I prefer NGC's 'strike and surfaces' grades but as mentioned, they don't really work either and don't apply to medieval coins. PCGS and ANACS use the same grades as for modern coins, which obviously has all the above limitations.

Herb_T

@Oldhoopster said:
Not sure if it will influence comments, but you're posting to a board that's owned and operated by PCGS I don't think there is anything in the site rules that prohibits questions like this as long as you don't post anything negative about any TPG. I don't know if my comments have any merit, its just something consider

PCGS sets a limit of 1600AD to grade even though I have found evidence that they grade much older coins.

Herb_T

@JohnConduitt said:
PCGS don't grade ancients, so you're safe there. But they do grade medieval hammered coins.

I would think the first question would be around why you're slabbing a hammered coin.

Collecting US coins can often be about obtaining barely-perceptible improvements in grade, since the production process makes modern coins much more uniform. People who collect hammered coins are often more interested in the history. They like nice looking coins, particularly collectors of ancient Greek coins, but the handmade nature of them - and the fact that most have been buried in the ground - means collectors are used to imperfections. Every ancient coin has been 'cleaned'. Many have test cuts or countermarks. The grade doesn't matter if it's historical and looks good.

And many like holding history in their hand - rather than a plastic slab. You don't have to worry so much about fingerprints on something with a stable patina and no flat surfaces. Very many (most?) ancient collectors don't want to buy a slabbed coin, so you're adding inconvenience for them.

The NGC 'ancients' criteria (strike and surface) make more sense than grade, but generally grading doesn't work very well across the hugely diverse hammered coinage - Roman sestertii, British pennies, Spanish cobs, Russian dengas, Celtic staters etc. What is the surface being judged against? Would all pennies of King Stephen of England be rated 1 for strike?

There's also the issue that very many hammered coins are not 'common'. It's common for a variety to be one of a dozen or fewer in existence, and yet not too expensive either. So you're pretty much guaranteed to be 'top pop' with many of them, although there are no population stats for ancients anyway.

And of course, for ancients there's no guarantee of authenticity. Hopefully, the TPG wouldn't grade a coin they thought was fake, but there's no guarantee. So it's no different to the coin passing through the experts at one of the top auction houses.

So the benefits of grading are much reduced for hammered coins, and choosing a TPG is much less important. I prefer NGC's 'strike and surfaces' grades but as mentioned, they don't really work either and don't apply to medieval coins. PCGS and ANACS use the same grades as for modern coins, which obviously has all the above limitations.

If for no other reason than “authentic “. Also, if you go to sell them they will do much better at auction slabbed than not.

John Conduitt

@Herb_T said:

If for no other reason than “authentic “. Also, if you go to sell them they will do much better at auction slabbed than not.

The TPGs don't guarantee authenticity for ancients. If you buy from CNG, for example, you can be just as sure an expert has checked authenticity and have more chance of getting your money back than buying a slab off eBay.

I don't know they would do any better at auction, let alone much better. Some US auctions (Heritage and Stack's Bowers) make a big deal of grades, but their auctions are set up for US coins. CNG, Spink, DNW, Solidus, Naumann, Roma, Davissons etc say very little about TPGs and I've not seen any evidence of slabbed coins doing better there. Indeed, hardly any of the coins are graded. Perhaps there's a reason for that.

Herb_T

At Heritage 96% of coins older than 1500 are graded. Check out their auction some time and you will see.

John Conduitt

@Herb_T said:
At Heritage 96% of coins older than 1500 are graded. Check out their auction some time and you will see.

Yes I've bought 2 graded coins from them - one Roman by NGC, one from the 900s by PCGS. But it wasn't because they were graded. 96% of everything on Heritage is graded. It's part of their strategy, based on their core business in US coins, but it's not one that's shared by anyone else selling ancients.

asheland

Prefer PCGS, but after that, NGC. For ancients, NGC