QUALIT AND CONSISTANCY IN GRADING/

Morganluver

Isn't quality and consistancy what we're striving and looking for in slabbed coins, if you choose to have them professionally graded? If one of the major grading companies would be willing to take as much time as it took to properly grade a coin( 1 minute, 5 minutes or whatever) and they showed consistancy over time based on open market and private trades, would you be willing to pay twice as much or more to have that kind of guarantee and liquidity, allowing you to really know the value of your coins in any given market? I really think graders could do a much better and more consistant job if they took more time with each coin and employed some kind of magnification, particularly with smaller denominations. So would you pay more for this service, and I really do think it's possible, that if they took more time we wouldn't see the wild or extreme fluctuations we see today. You know what they say, "haste makes waste" or most certainly more submissions

Baley

you can take all damn day lookin at a coin this way and that, but if you are REQUIRED to express your opinion as a single integer from 1-70, when at the upper end of that range, there are so many truly IN BETWEENERS, especially between 64 and 69, I believe you are doomed to get it "wrong" a lot more of the time than you would get it right if you were just able to use another decimal place, and a range that expresses the standard deviation of your confidence in the number.

dorkkarl

why can't you understand that grades are a matter of opinion, & therefore by definition are not consistent??? pcgs does the best they can, but to think they are going to be always, or even usually consistent is demanding that humans be robots.

enjoy the coins, & get over the grading issue.

K S

Gilbert

IF the Numiscap truly only costs $5 (reholdering fee) then I think $30 (regular) is sufficient for a minute's work -- that already comes out to what, $1500 per hour's work. Compute that out to the five or ten seconds they currently spend on a coin and what kind of hourly rate that might be; can't say I've ever considered whether any other company's manhour rate was that expensive.

Morganluver

I guess my basic point was that I really believe they don't take enough time to really look at the coin they are grading, especially smaller coins, mostly because they have such a backlog of coins that thay have to "speed" through them many times missing the "mark". As an example, I have some toned Roosies that are virtually mark free graded MS 65 while others graded MS 66 have 6-8 obvious marks. I could only ascertain this by viewing them with a 5X loupe allowing me to quickly and easily see the marks or lack of marks. Viewing, and trying to grade these with the naked eye revealed very little and I found it virtually impossible to assign a grade other than an uneducated guess.

TONEDDOLLARS

Gilbert,

Do the people who handle the coin when it arrives work for nothing, or the time it takes to package it back up to send to you. What about the office help, bookkeeping and such, due they also work for nothing. I also suppose they work in a rent free building.

I am not defending their fees only pointing out that a lot more is involved with those fees than just the time it takes to grade.

theboz11

I believe that grading is totally overrated and quibbled about entirely to much. The point that really count is the money in your pocket and what you want to spend for a coin that you see. Regardless of "Grade + or-" if you find a coin you want and can afford it , you buy it. If the coin is over or under grade by someone else it amounts to a ballpark that YOU with your expertice can work with. If a dealer wants to go by some strict standard that someone else has set which you find in fault, He may lose the sale and maybe a returning customer.

redhott

what dorkkarl said...

He italicized the two words "by definition" but many will never get what that means to a grading "opinion."

Since graders are humans last time I checked, they have opinions that are subject to change. Yes, depending on which day it is, whether it's early morning or late afternoon, etc., etc., etc. - just like all the jokes say!!! It's simply a fact of life that opinions change as the brain takes in each new piece of information. Opinion change is not a disease limited to professional coin graders or your spouse.

And that's why you or I, or David Hall, or top grader #1, or top grader #2, or PCGS as an organization, or anyone who is honest about his personal grading of even his own collection, simply CAN NOT consistently grade the same coin.