Why is the census ridiculous?

SimonW

Does anyone know why the PCGS census for forgien coins is such a mess? There's pretty much no order to it. Why is this? Any ideas?

It can't be that hard to have a sorting function or have them listed in date order or something like that. I like the PCGS one because you can access available images, unlike NGC...but at least THEY have an order to theirs! (That's right, I went there!😂)

It's quite possible that I'm terrible at technology and it's more user friendly than I know.

Any insight folks?

mvs7

No insight, but you are spot on that it is a mess. If I want to look up a certain date or denomination after I get to the country list, I generally use the Chrome Control-F "find" feature to highlight the correct lines. Tedious, certainly. NGC has a nice organization to theirs, whereby you pick country and denomination, then the whole list is sorted in date order. That can't be that hard.

JohnnyCache

I couldn't agree more.

PCGS could, and should, do something to make the experience of using the World Coins census better.

Only the top tier countries really seem to be organized properly.

As a Spanish colonial collector I find that only Mexico is organized and that I have to use the browser find function when I need to review Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Peru.

RSP

Yes, I brought up this subject when I was speaking with one of the PCGS representatives at a PCGS luncheon a year or two ago. Her reply was to put my suggestion in writing and send it to the office (which I never got around to doing). At the time I got the impression that it was just not a priority. Perhaps as a group we can get this accomplished. One letter we all can sign? Unfortunately I am not computer savvy enough to do this. RSP

neildrobertson

I will say that the Germany section has gotten better over time and is still way better than NGC's. The biggest issue seems to be that the order defaults to coin number. From what I can gather, many coin numbers are generated at the time the first coin is submitted to grading of that type/variety. Sometimes they'll create numbers for a whole series at once and that will get them in order. Otherwise it's seemingly haphazard. I'd prefer a chronological order rather than coin number. In the past when I've inquired, changing coin numbers seems burdensome and they're reluctant to do it.

worldcoinguy

The low hanging fruit for me would simply be to sort by description column rather than PCGS # since date is the prefix on most results. A more elaborate solution involves some methodical database cleanup including but not limited to:
1-Separate date, denomination, classification, and description into separate data elements. I realize that is easier said than done, but there are numerous data parsing/data cleanup tools available and/or vendors who can help with data transformation of this nature.
2-Improve website to allow columns to be sortable and filterable

WCC

You are not imagining it.

I too wish Bolivia and Peru had a similar organization to Mexico. Mexico is organized like South Africa which I still check intermittently. These are two of the few organized better than NGC.