Follow up on regrade versus guarantee resubmission

Mark

David:

In response to a question about the difference between a regrade and a guarantee resubmission, you said:

Regrade is when you send a coin in that is already in PCGS holder because you thinl it is undergraded. We crack the coin out, send to the grading room for grading and reholder the coin in either the old or new grade...depending on the outome. We gyarantee the grade will not go down.

Guarantee resubmission is when you think the coin is over graded. We send it thru the grading room and if the graders agree, we'll pay you based on the terms of our grading guarantee.

Here's my follow up: If I submitted a, say, MS65 coin for a regrade and the graders give it a grade of, say, MS63, why doesn't the grade guarantee kick in? In other words, why reholder the coin as an MS65 when the graders agree that the coin is MS63? Now, it's my bet that such a situation doesn't happen often, but in the few times when it does, aren't you letting an overgraded coin leave PCGS?

Thanks in advance!

Mark

homerunhall

If you send in a coin for regrade and it gets a lower grade, the verifier will check out the coin and confer with another grader if the coin truly is a lower grade. In that case, we'll turn it into a guarantee resubmission and pay you accordingly for the downgrade. If the coin is a liner that really could make sense in the original grade, we'll reholder the coin in the original grade. The point is that whatever happens during the regrade process, there is no risk to you. For the life of me, I cannot understand why more people do not use the regrade service instead of gambling on crack-outs.

Realize that we take the overall quality of our product...i.e. the quality of every coin in a PCGS holder...very seriously. We also do things like buy coins "off the market" when we see an obvious mistake at a show or in an auction. I look at most of the PCGS coins in most major auctions. If I see a mistake, we'll buy it at the auction, reholder it in the lower grade and then put it in a Bowers auction and let it sell for whatever the market will bear. We are constantly "grooming" the product. Frankly, there aren't a lot of blatant mistakes out there, but when we see them we take care of them one way or the other. We are also fortunate to have a good group of PCGS dealers that alert us when they bump into problem coins. When you grade 70,000 coins a month, there can be a few (and I think it really is only a couple of coins per month) mistakes that get out.