Why does grading cost so much?

mbbiker

I see everyone talking about how it only takes about 10 seconds to grade a coin, thats 360 coins an hour at about 10 bucks a coin thats $3600 an hour, I know that your paying for the holder to but come on you think they could grade coins for less than $3600 an hour!!

KlectorKid

I agree, pay $10+ for 10 seconds and a piece of paper+plastic.

Coqui

$10 for a holder!...I have never send a coin for grading because of that....I will like to send a lot of coin sbut I dont have enough $$$

maddox

the slabbing companies have expensive overhead, clown makeup is VERY expensive

ms71

Grading costs so much because it can. For better or worse, the market has come to rely very heavily on these services; some, of course, much more than others. These are the services that can command the higher fees. You can, of course, get "grading" for five bucks or so from some of the services more given to granting a coin the benefit of the doubt. Or the shadow of a doubt.
If you're at it long enough, you're likely to need the strictly "grading" aspect of the service less and less. I relyon them more for the assurance of authenticity, and I won't consider anything but PCGS, NGC, or ANACS for purchase. If I had access to the array of coins, including counterfeits, that I'd need to gain confidence in my own ability to authenticate, I'd rely on them less. But I'll never have that, so I'll have to stick with the "good guys".

TAP444

It's the over head, they have to pay all the graders big bucks
and everyone at the service must have a title and make big bucks.
that is why the profit is so small and in the case of pcgs the stock so low.
to many chiefs and not enough indians.anybody have the gross numbers
for pcgs from last quarter??
Tim

mdwoods

I really don't think 10 dollars a coin for moderns is outrageous. The potential for very good gain is there if you are very, very critical of your coins when submitting them. I stress the word critical. And, there is a lot of overhead. Buildings, employees, benefits, taxes, maintenence costs. All these things add up. And, you still have to make a profit if you can. Keeping the boards and Registry in order probably costs a pretty penny too. mdwoods

TAP444

maybe the members of this board could form
a llc and combine forces as a hostile takeover
of pcgs and do away with the money losing segment
and just keep the coin and card sections

jom

<< <i>the slabbing companies have expensive overhead, clown makeup is VERY expensive >>





jom

RYK

I actually think the price to pay for slabbing is probably not unreasonable. For less expensive coins, ANACS at $12/coin (less with specials) is not a bad value.

Also, remember these things:
1. Before third party grading, the collector/customer was getting hosed being sold over-graded coins, or worse, counterfeit coins. Third party grading has provided some safety for the consumer. For large dollar purchases, it becomes a vanishingly small fraction of the price of the coin.
2. The guarantee provided by the grading companies is a form of insurance that occasionally gets collected upon. Laura/Legend reported an occasion on these boards in the last few days in which an altered coin was returned to PCGS for a refund (I think)
3. It is not the time per grade assignment that you are paying for, it is the training, experience, and expertise that supports the grade assignment. As an anaology, I am a radiologist. I get paid $7 to 12 to read a chest x-ray. Sometimes it takes me less than a minute to do so. In order to make that $10 in 30 seconds, I had to go to medical school for four years, post-graduate training five years, and my seven years of practice experience goes into that interpretation. Similarly, training, experience, and expertise goes into the grading process.
4. I doubt the operation is run efficiently enough for one person to generate $3600/hour of revenue. And that person would be exhausted if he/she did, and the quality of the work in the later of the hypothetical hour would be far worse than the earlier part. The radiology analogy applies here, as well. You would not want your coin to be the 100th of the hour by a single grader, just like you would not want your mammogram to be the 100th of the hour by the radiologist (don't worry, no one reads one hundred per hour!)
5. Some radiology cases take much more time than you allot for. You show colleagues, you call other experts, this is time consuming, and inefficient, but you do it to get to the correct answer. I expect that graders also run into difficult, non-routine coins that require extra effort.

TomB

Capitalism.

nwcs

Grading price =

The turnaround time +
The cost of plastic +
The cost of grading +
The cost of storage +
The cost of overhead +
The insurance you are buying with it that "guarantees" the coin will not be overgraded +
The partial insurance you are buying for others that your coin wasn't overgraded that was spread out over all buyers

littlewicher

How much do Mr. Hall and the graders pull in a year?

sinin1

I think I read somewhere the graders are making 100K + a year - what most people do not realize is the overhead required to run a company of this size - the security measures required - the support staff - anywhere from carol who helps with the boards to the people who run the slabbing machines and put their thumb prints on occasional coins just to keep submitters on their toes!

People are complaining about the slow turnaround times - 50 days for economy - how many millions of dollars of coins do you think they have of clients on hand, as well as their famed grading set. It would be interesting to see their financials - does anyone know how many millions a year CU has in revenue?

If you think you can do it better, their is always the possibility of YOU starting your own company to be in competition with the biggies, or maybe you could buy a smally and try to make it a biggy. People are so quick to complain, and yet continue to use their services -if $30 is more than you want to pay, try ACG $3.50/ for 100 coins and 60 days.

maddox

I have to agree, the peace of mind knowing your coin has been certified as aspecific grade is well worth the $10.00 to $30.00 cost, especially if the slab alone raises the value of the coin vs the raw form. Case in point, had a 82CC MS65 raw and I could not sell for the right price on ebay, spent the $15 for slabbing and got more than I originally wanted. $15 investment brought an extra $146.

PCGS = Love/Hate

rd5425

I really don't see what the problem is, why doesn't everybody just use ACG, they manage to provide the numismatic community with fair grading at cheap prices.