What has been your experience/opinion with the quality of PCGS Trueview in the past couple of years?
chromaticcoins
Posts: 78 ✭✭✭
Just looking for your honest opinions on general quality, consistency, and your overall satisfaction with the photos being provided. I have recently spoken to a photography supervisor about my opinion, and I'm looking for the opinions of other collectors and dealers.
Thanks
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In my opinion, Truview was (past tense) something I sought as part of the grading package. Over the last several years, I feel the quality has deteriorated to the extent that I try to find ways to not get true view or gold shield.
There was a point where the digital albums were a true draw, and part of the reason I chose PCGS as my go to submission. I now find the Truviews are essentially unusable, or at least extremely unattractive, and not an enhancement to my albums. Now I either pay for private photos, or take advantage of the great photos from great collection and use those to represent Coins in my registry set.
I suspect not JMHO
Buffalo Nickel Digital Album
Toned Buffalo Date SetDigital Album
https://pcgs.com/setregistry/mysetregistry/album/411385 7070 Registry<
My current sub I sent in two pieces for TV. Ill share how they look and an opinion once I get them back! I know a 13 T1 Buff in 68 I sent in had horrendous photos last Fall.
hi @Matt04 , we're sorry to hear that you had a poor experience with our TrueView service last fall. we want to make sure your experience is the best it could be and that your photos are beautiful. can you please send me the cert of your coin from last fall, and I'll check if we have any alternatives you might like better? sending that over DM would be cool too if you prefer that as well. thank you!> @Matt04 said:
Isa (she/her)
PCGS Marketing
I believe current TrueView images of matte proof cents look washed out, do not reflect the actual color and beauty of the coins and place too much emphasis on minor defects hardly visible looking at the coins directly (much like infamous Heritage images). The current images of modern proof cents do not adequately display the highly desirable cameo contrast making beautiful coins look hideous. There are several photographer/collectors I am sure would be able to provide corroboration and advice (eg. Robec and Renomedphys). One dealer couldn’t identify some of the coins in his inventory from the TrueView images! I wish it wasn’t so. Best of luck in trying to make scans look like photos and photos look like works of art (which are some of the coins).
Always been happy with the True Views I've received. Haven't seen any real issues, that being said there is always room for improvement. I suggest looking at the Great Collections photos, they are a step or two above.
The coins I have received back with the pictures have been pretty nice. From what i have seen looking at others coin pictures, I feel that there might be a default setting they use for the picture but not all medals reflect light the same way with those settings. Gold coins come back absolutely stunning.
My biggest personal issue, beyond them just not showing up, is more of an issue with integration within the digital albums. If you're not using the garbage android app, or it's not a trueview, the image will not show up properly in the album. Upload a nice clear crisp high resolution image, and what shows up in the album is degraded into something unrecognizable. The camera integration within the android app is horrid, you've got two zoom options: 200 miles away, or closeup of the nose-hairs. Pinch zoom is just flat out broken. Because of this, I Gold-Shield all of my submissions, because I want that decent imagery, and when buying slabbed coins, I'll prioritize Gold-shields over poverty slabs, for that consistency. In America, Gold Shield has been tied hand-in-hand with TrueView inclusion for as long as I've been a member. Overseas, apparently, that's not the case (ie, that Gold Shield does NOT guarantee consistent standards) - I don't know if they're grading them overseas, or if they're sending them to California and back, but getting different cost/service standards, I don't know. Previous chats with PCGS customer service suggested that the overseas graders didn't have good cameras, or some nonsense like that. Regardless, the fact remains, not all Gold Shields have True View, and instead get a basic picture of the slab itself, like this:
https://www.pcgs.com/cert/47563246
(And yes, I know, that's easy enough to verify before making a purchase, and I do just that... but that doesn't make it any less annoying)
If I were to launch any complaints about the True View process and consistency, "for me"... that would probably be the worst of my experiences. As far as I'm concerned, PCGS should be True-Viewing EVERY coin they slab. The slab is there to protect the coin, the image should be there to show what that COIN looks like, not what the scuffed up slab looks like five years later. I know that's not quite the same concerns as the original poster was fielding, but that's my take, for whatever it's worth
ill send over a DM regarding my current order issue where my order was complete over a week ago, I was told it takes a few days for the Trueview images that I paid for to show, still nothing.
The TVs are very inconsistent. Some of them still come out great. I got this one yesterday and it's fantastic IMO:
But then they turn around the next order will have bad pictures like this:
or this
See also my thread about PCGS is no longer able to take in-slab photos. Not sure what they do for GSA slabs now. The've somehow lost the ability to take the same kinds of photos as every high end auction house.
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1122766/pcgs-policy-change-reinforces-conjecture-about-abandonment-of-support-for-registry-digital-album