Help Us Improve the PCGS Digital Album Experience

PCGS_Hy

Hello everyone!

We need your help. As many of you are aware, the PCGS Digital Album platform has faced ongoing technical challenges. While we have logged a significant amount of feedback over time, our team is currently prioritizing a series of major fixes. To do this effectively, we need fresh, reproducible data to provide our developers.

If you are experiencing issues, please provide us with a detailed report including the following:

• Description of the Issue: What specifically is happening? Is the problem constant or intermittent?
• Impacted Items: Please provide specific Certification Numbers and the names of the Set Composites affected.
• Steps to Reproduce: If possible, list the exact steps our team can take to recreate the error on our end.
• Visual Evidence: Screenshots or screen recordings that illustrate the glitch are incredibly helpful.

We sincerely appreciate your patience and your dedication to the platform. Our team is working hard to deliver the seamless experience you expect and deserve.

Best regards,

Hy and Charles

oldsmagnet

Since nobody else is chiming in yet, I'll start it off, and start with saying "Thank You" for making a solid effort to get things under control. I think a big part of the problem (for programmers and users alike) is that it's never consistent. One day all the images will show up just fine, another day none of 'em will. Sometimes a reload or refresh will bring some or all of them back, sometimes it won't. For my sets, it's been several months since I've noticed any consistent problems with images loading, so this is an area that I'm typically fairly quite about. But I know I'm not in the majority, there. My biggest consistent gripes over the the digital albums involves trying to upload imagery to it. If I use my good camera on a tripod with perfect lighting to get perfect, crisp images, and upload those, they'll show up blurry in the album - and then if you click the image from there, (or hover over it) the crystal clear image would show up just fine. I think I've replaced all of those versions with shots from the mobile app, which uploads well enough, with image quality being maintained after the upload, but the user interface on the mobile app is terrible, and there's really no focus control available there. You just touch the screen, and you're zoomed in like 100x. When you finally get it reasonably framed, you just give up and say "good enough, I guess" -- and, well, most of my albums are loaded up with "good enough" images. I've ran the mobile app on several different phones now, and they've all reacted the same way (they've all been Samsung Galaxy's) -- I don't know if it's a phone-specific thing, or a 'me' thing, or just something nobody else has made a point to complain about. I recognize that that's probably unrelated to the problem that's being discussed here, so I'll close with a suspicion I'd had in the past, that the image server would seem to take too long to actually find and send the images, and the web browser interface would just time-out before allowing the images to load. Unfortunately, anything deeper than that is well above my pay-grade :-/

WAYNEAS

Hi @PCGS_Hy
I am having issues with the digital album feature with croping in my photos into the 2023 Proof Set.
My set named: W. A. SCHULTZ SET#2023 PROOF SET
When I make my selection to add a photo, the photo just disappears and cannot be magnified to shrink or enlarge for fitting into the window.
This is not a new issue for me as it was a problem when I first created the set.
Cert# 47646336 Kanaka'ole clad and cert#47902995 Kanaka'ole silver.
Thanks and keep up the strong effort that we are beginning to see here.
Wayne

JFK_Collector

Hello,

Thank you for the question(s).

It would be helpful if the pictures of the true view photos attached to the coin when the cert number is verified would be the same size.

When I look at the "Showcase Image Gallery", (as shown below), the set doesn't look professional by have some TrueView photos smaller than others.

https://pcgs.com/setregistry/collectors-showcase/errors/calebs-kennedy-half-dollar-errors/imagegallery/2045

The Showcase Image Gallery allows the owner to have comments attached to the photos where the Showcase Digital Album does not allow owner comments.

Thanks,
Tim

JFK_Collector

@PCGS_Hy

I think my issue is that earlier photos taken for True View were attached to the cert number in a smaller format. I have notice that someone at PCGS has tried to enlarge the smaller picture to match the rest, but both the new larger picture shows up alongside the original smaller format.

I was wondering if the enlarged photo could replace the old smaller formatted picture that is attached to the cert number and then delete the original smaller photo. Because the True View photo attached to the cert number automatically attaches to the cert number when it is added to a set.

Just my thoughts on the subject,
Tim

PCGS_Hy

Thank you all for the feedback. This is definitely great feedback that I can work on with the team. Please feel free to keep it coming.

spodlas

Hello, Hy,
My set is Cherry Bomb toned matte proof lincoln set. Also I have Angels’ Assemblage matte proof lincoln set. I cannot enter my photos into the digital albums. I click on the empty slot and my photo choice comes up. I can choose a coin and adjust it to fit in the slot and hit OK. It is very time consuming and I have done it for both sets dozens of times. I hit save on the screen with texture and color choices. Once I leave the screen, then all my work is lost and the digital albums remain blank. Any help you can provide now is appreciated as you have told me in the past that you do not have a solution.

skamieniecki

My only suggestion would be that in the digital albums that all coins be the same size. When you have a muti-denominational set in a digital album there really is no reason that the dime be smaller than a dollar.

MrEureka

Just a reality check, FWIW. Are the digital albums really worth the effort? Seems to me the best way by far to see a collection is in a gallery format, because it allows for viewing both sides at the same time. So even though the digital albums are a fun thing to look at for a minute or two, I think they’re expendable.

And while we’re on the subject, one of the cool things about real world and virtual coin albums is seeing the holes that need to be filled, getting excited about the prospects of filling them, and then watching them get filled in over a period of time. With that in mind, I’d like to see an option offered in the gallery format where the empty holes in the collection would be represented by black and white stock images of the missing coins. So, for example, if you have 5 of 11 coins in a set, you’ll see your 5 coins in color and another 6 coins in B&W. Maybe a big ask, but not a bad tradeoff if done in conjunction with getting rid of the albums.