PCGS NGC CAC graders
Coinobsessed
Posts: 73 ✭✭✭
I attended the Fun show. I thought I would start a topic for discussion after spending several days there observing the grading services. In general, PCGS coins bring more than NGC coins and PCGS CAC sticker coins bring more than PCGS coins. NGC coins are not considered as strictly graded as PCGS or CAC. Although I would say that when NGC started they were equally as strict or even stricter. A finalizer from NGC is now the president of CAC. So he went from the “looser grading service” to “the most conservative”. I just find it interesting that now the coins he finalizes are considered worth more. So is CAC dependent on JA? What happens when he leaves?
My second observation is that PCGS is the dominant player with their table always busy. I am not sure I saw any CACG coins except for the coins displayed by Dell Loy Hansen. I think it is going to be a long time before the CACG coins are seen widely.
Any comments?
Comments
Services all grade to different standards. If NGC wants to be "more conservative", something a lot of members have been saying they are doing, they just need to tighten their standards a little more. PCGS and CACG could do the same.
No one service is necessarily better than the other, as the best finalizers kinda get shuffled around. However, those finalizers grade to the service's standard, not their own.
Coin Photographer.
Every grading company has different standards and the graders and finalizer follows the set standards of the grading company.
You must have not stopped by my table. I had dozens of coins in CACG holders, something like 30. The best coins eventually make into the best holder as one famous TPG used to say…………..
I also saw alot of CACG holdered coins across the bourse so I am not sure where you were looking.
PCGS has been dominant against NGC only in US coins bc of their marketing approach. Both have been loose and strict at different times in their history.
In Ancients and World, NGC is dominant or equal in different sectors. Did you walk the floor in the World/Ancient section of the bourse?
Have a look at this auction:
https://coins.ha.com/c/search/results.zx?dept=1909&mode=live&auction_name=3122&ic=Items-OpenAuctions-Open-BrowseCatalog-051914
NGC=641, PCGS=126.
Yup PCGS is dominant…………..
Some of my best coins are in NGC slabs, so BOTH services (NGC & PCGS) are good, IMHO. Yes, the public slant is towards PCGS and, especially, the PCGS/CAC w/sticker combo. Personally, I like NGC, PCGS, PCGS/CAC or NGC/CAC and will purchase ANY of those if I, MYSELF, approve of the coin. The CACG slabs are picking up traction and sell for good money but I tend to stay away from those, as I am a Registry participant. I also don't want to overpay for something, so new, that has yet to be proven as market favorable, in the long term.
Sometimes, it’s better to be LUCKY than good. 🍀 🍺👍
My Full Walker Registry Set (1916-1947):
https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/16292/
Personal bias and misinformation on your part.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
I have 564 graded coins, all but three are NGC or PCGS and those three are ANACS. No two coin graders, professional or otherwise, are going to grade every coin submitted identically. It is an opinion at the end of the day, hopefully backed up by experience and education. I always buy the coin, not the slab as they say, and enjoy my collection for what it brings.
A larger number of coins available in auctions or elsewhere doesn’t necessarily indicate that a grading service is “dominant”. A smaller number of coins for sale could indicate that they’re in greater demand, more likely to be held off the market by collectors and therefore, less available.
By the way, for purposes of discussion, what defines “dominant”? More submissions, higher prices realized or other?
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
I did not look at Ancient or World coins.
Not to mention a topic that has been discussed ad nauseum...
And by this same op if I'm remembering correctly. I am amazed at the vitriol that so many have for JA and his operations.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
Just to add to the topic, not trying to be contrarian or negative.
Many of us remember Alan Hagar and Accugrade. Alan could grade there was no question about that. He could consistently overgrade MS coins by a point. You have to be a good grader to be able to do that. And he was often liberal on letting problem coins slip into problem-free holders.
I view CACG as the inverse of Accugrade. If you know how to grade you can consistently undergrade. And if you're conservative on problems then nothing that might be a problem gets into a problem-free holder.
The 100 or so investors who ponied up a lot of money to buy in to CACG are their main supporters. I felt this way for a long time and still believe that PCGS is #1 and will remain #1 for the foreseeable future.
If PCGS wanted to go Ultra conservative and kick out any potential problem coin they could do so. I view JA and Doug Winter as the gods of gold. I still believe that but also believe that CACG is on the wrong track to success. At least what I would consider my definition of success among TPG.
Sometimes, I’m amazed by that, as well. But I didn’t interpret the opening post as being an example of that attitude.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
The leadership of any company is important so while CAC is heavily reliant on JA, it will operate fine without him as well. Subsequent leadership will decide if they are going to live up to the same mission statement and standards. Sometimes a change of leadership results in improvement, sometimes disappointment. Ellis leaving Chipotle has IMO been a negative for the customer experience. John Feigenbaum buying Greysheet appears to be a big improvement so far.
The CAC competition has decades of material compared to just a year or two for CACG. The law of numbers says it will be a while yet before CACG material is prevalent at any venue. This is not a reflection of market acceptance.
The problem is with decades of material already out there, you can't really change the direction of the ship at this point. Reputations will not be changed with a few years of changed standards.
Agreed.
Depends on the metric you're looking at and the coin type. NGC certainly has an edge in world and ancients and shipwreck coins as they have focused heavily on this. ANACS seems to dominate variety attribution and "entry level" coinage.
http://ProofCollection.Net
Perhaps it is my personal bias, but the op's post seems slanted (in a nice way) and while not overt is just another in a long line of posts that are meant to be derogatory towards CAC while at the same time pumping PCGS.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
My comment was based just on that one post, as I don’t recall the others on this subject.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
We use a standardized multiple- choice exam for the Final for one of the classes I teach. I tell the students that I give them an A for the semester if they get 100% of them wrong. At first, some of them are excited until i point out that the only way to get them all wrong is to know what the right answer is.
Apologies I did not word that reply very well. What I meant to convey is that there has been a constant stream of derogatory posts about CAC and JA by many forum members not just the op. But to my point, while I was not at FUN there is no way that the op's statement "I am not sure I saw any CACG coins except for the coins displayed by Dell Loy Hansen" could possibly be correct. Even at the local monthly 30-35 table coin show I see multiple dealers with CACG slabs and one in particular that has a significant inventory of CACG material.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
I have never posted a negative comment on JA. In fact I have many PCGS CAC coins. Maybe it is the dealers I looked at, but I really don’t remember seeing CACG coins. My observation is that the CAC sticker has caught on, but it is going to take CACG a while to be more widely accepted. I see very few CACG coins in the auctions. Will crossing Dell Loy’s coins increase the market? These are my observations, not trying to start an argument.
I'm not sure it's a matter of acceptance. It's pretty clear that the market "accepts" them. I think you meant to say it will take a while for the number of coins in CACG slabs to catch up to the number of coins in other slabs.
http://ProofCollection.Net
CAC has been in business much longer than CACG has, so your observations aren’t surprising.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
Anyone remember when you used to buy a coin?
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
And what I am saying above is that my experience at FUN was an exact opposite of yours. There were a number of tables that had many CACG slabbed coins there like mine. So perhaps you were looking in the wrong place at FUN.
CACG is accepted exactly like CAC bc they use identical grading standards. That is why both carry the same retail value as shown here:
https://www.cacgrading.com/pop-report
Like any new company competing with established companies, it does take time for their product to increase in numbers enough to become prevalent. PCGS and NGC have put millions and millions of coins into their slabs over decades so it is not surprising that a <2 year old company that have so far only put out a small fraction of coins in their slabs compared to these TPG’s should not have the same numbers in a bourse that large. Hmm…………..
So not sure how you decide that means it is not widely accepted and not catching on? I don’t see a connection there about catching on and lacking a pervasive presence in the arena when so few are available compared to long established TPG’s. I would instead say that the fact that really amazing coins from many sources (not just Hansen) are coming out in their holders speaks to the clear fact that they have indeed ‘caught on’ and it is just a matter of time until their presence is much larger.
All one has to do is see the coins in their COTW newsletter to realize amazing coins are migrating to CACG………. So yes I would say they are catching on………………….
@Coinobsessed said:
Here is a link to John Bulter’s FUN show report where he notes multiple times names of dealers carrying CACG holdered coins:
https://www.cacgrading.com/post/fun-show-2025-report/
You must have missed these folks tables.
From his FUN show report:
"I was delighted to hear that he was successful in moving a lot of our products. I was hearing from more dealers at the FUN show how they were buying and selling more of our product. One of our regulars stopped by to let me know he was happy that he was able to find more CACG options on the bourse floor compared to past shows."
A smaller number of coins for sale could indicate that they’re in greater demand, more likely to be held off the market by collectors and therefore, less available.
Good point!
Interesting post; wish I had been at FUN.
As far as your "statements", they all seem subjective; as an Engineer by training and a counterfeit coin researcher and author I have always relied on facts. Not sure what the "facts" are in the post...
Well I do hope the CACG coins get more popular. Almost all of my coins have CAC stickers.
@Coinobsessed, thank you for starting this thread. As a newbie who is still getting his feet wet in this hobby, understanding the different slabs and grading standards is important to me. I went to my first coin show late last year and can offer a couple newbie observations. I do know that the coin is more important than the slab, but IMHO some slab designs enhance the attractiveness of a coin, while others detract from it. This is a matter of personal taste, of course, but for the same coin in the same condition and at the same price, I likely would shy away from the less attractive slabs.
And as a techy, I'll admit I liked the NFC technology in the PCGS slabs, which made it super simple to check the validity of two coins that I was interested in at the show.
They don’t have to know what the right answer is to have some chance of “success” in being wrong. Depending upon how many answers there are, odds are still probably strongly in their favor for each question. Of course, the more questions, the greater the odds against them getting all of them wrong.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
There could be one completely implausible, obviously incorrect choice for each question. Under those circumstances it would be easy to get 100% of the answers wrong without knowing any of the correct answers.
Smitten with DBLCs.
Coinobsessed
I didn’t read any CAC vitriol in your post but I attended FUN and saw CACG coins at a lot of tables, including some excellent dealers. Next year, I would suggest you check out Desert Moon, Peak Rarities, Liz Coggan, Witter Coins, Paradime Coins. All had CACG coins.
"Look up, old boy, and see what you get." -William Bonney.
Unfortunately for NGC, there are market factors that hurt their brand.
"Got a flaming heart, can't get my fill"
I was at FUN too @Coinobsessed . Like you, I buy CAC coins. So as I was moving quickly up and down each aisle, my eye became trained to just look for booths that had coins with CAC stickers. Since the logo on CACG slabs looks like a CAC sticker, and is positioned on the slab just like most CAC stickers, they did not get “filtered out”. So as I then looked slowly at the coins at the tables that caught my eye, like many other replies in this thread, I too saw a LOT of dealers with CACG slabs!
Secondly, the goal of CACG is not to surpass PCGS or NGC in quantity. Their goal is to surpass them in grading “quality” in their opinion. So just as the vast majority of the coins at FUN were not stickered, the vast majority of graded coins will never be in CACG holders. But I truly believe that the quantity of CACG holdered coins will indeed increase over time.
Dealers provide material that the attendees want. That’s why at every Winter and Summer FUN show I see raw coins in 2x2’s, slabbed coins mainly in NGC holders, plenty in PCGS holders, and growing numbers in CACG holders.
Steve
My collecting “Pride & Joy” is my PCGS Registry Dansco 7070 Set:
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/type-sets/design-type-sets/complete-dansco-7070-modified-type-set-1796-date/publishedset/213996
I agree Steve that I missed the CACG coins. The dealers I mainly do business with did not carry CACG. The copper guys, Legend, and some others. I passed over a lot of dealers after quickly looking at their cases. I am looking for specific coins at this time in my collecting. Generally the coins I am looking for are too pops and are usually in auctions. I do know that a number of dealers are waiting to see how the market develops before they cross or carry five figure coins in CACG.
No such thing on a properly constructed, validated exam. All answers are plausible.
You can increase the odds by kneeing and correct answers and intentionally answer incorrectly. That decreases the number you are guessing. But on any question you don't know the correct answer, you have a 25% chance of being correct. On a 70 question exam, if you only knew 60 of the questions, your chance of guessing the other 10 wrong is only 5.6%. 60 questions correct, by the way, translates to an A in the Final and less than 5% of the entire country get 60 correct. No one capable of getting 60 right need benefit from my gimmick.
The odds of guessing then all wrong, by the way, is 1.8 in a billion. I'll let you know when I've given the exam a billion times.
And you have an almost zero chance of getting them all wrong even if i used the wrong answer key.
I'll also let you know if anyone ever gets them all wrong.
But everyone is somewhat missing the point.... probably because they are ignoring the post I was responding to.
Recently, I have been sending a few more coins to NGC (store inventory) becuase of the return shipping theft problem. Lately, i have found NGC to be as stringent on grading as PCGS is/was. Not all series, but several, also NGC seems to net grade a few more for marks, light scratches rim , issues ,than prior years.
as far as my personal stuff its 100% PCGS
Coinobsessed
1 think you are missing a couple points still.
"Look up, old boy, and see what you get." -William Bonney.
I don’t believe in making generalizations about TPG’s. I have material from all 5 and evaluate each coin accordingly. I do refer to the CDN CAC / CACG price in pricing that material.
Thank you for this! I was still trying to understand the "point" of the Op's post.
You need to know what the individual graders are doing at each grading service and CAC at any given point in time to be able to answer this question in the here and now. People / entities who constantly submit large volumes of various types of coins know this. We don't.
I rarely submit coins now. But when I do, I ask someone who is in the know about the above, beforehand.
"Seu cabra da peste,
"Sou Mangueira......."
It’s possible I missed seeing CACG coins at Legend. In looking at their website I see one CACG coin in their inventory.
Fun was loaded with CACG. Went to a smaller regional show this weekend and it was also flush with CACG holders. I noticed this because last year I hardly saw them but this year my thought was “wow these are catching on”.
Who or whom establishes the grading standards? A board? And is it probably that at some point the makeup of people who establish said standard leave/pass on? Thereby new blood with possible new standard views incorporate a new different standard then the previous one? Would not that alter/negate previous established standards?
Ideally the standards are published. PCGS has done a decent job of this with Photograde and their book. I'm not sure if the competition have books or not, but if they don't it would be nice if they would.
http://ProofCollection.Net
This has happened with ANACS, ICG, etc which is what has hurt them in the market. There is not consistency across ownership groups.
PCGS and NGC have been stable. They know better than to mess with the standards too much. As soon as there is inconsistency, you are immediately damaged as a going concern and it becomes almost impossible to recover. Customers will not trust you.
You might want to change "that to me" to "than to mess".
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
PCGS and NGC have been stable? None of the original graders are
still grading for any of them. Standards are clearly different over four decades. There were no 70's until the later 80's. Now they are everywhere. Newer coins are better made, but grade inflation has affected all the 60 and up coins. Ownership has changed for all as well, PCGS, 3 owners, NGC 2 owners, ANACS 4, ICG 2. I'd say the only thing stable is change. J.P.
We've discussed this ad-nauseum, but "published standards" are worthless. Trying to define the criteria for grades above ms-60 is a fools errand, as it all depends on one's interpretation of subjective descriptors. I.E. "Nearly as perfect" "Virtually flawless", "minor blemishes". If you lined up a PCGS 65, NGC 65, and a CACG 65 next to each other, you wouldn't be able to discern which coin doesn't meet those criteria.
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Really? Any test I've ever taken had at least one if not two obviously implausible answers.