How did PCGS get away with this?

MrEureka

When PCGS opened its doors, it was not obvious that third party certification was going to dominate the industry. Now, virtually every valuable high grade US coin gets slabbed. How did PCGS get away with this? Could you have known it was going to turn out this way?

Julian

Not unless you are actually a fortune teller. I guess the way that they were able to accomplish it was thru aggressive marketing. Originally, they did have many experienced numismatists looking at the coins, and were probably more accurate than today. Encapsulating is a monster size business, much bigger than any coin business. They went with the money, after initially offerring a service. Registries, who would have ever thought of it? Money is the answer.

oreville

Most great coins were already slabbed at the time, in capitol holders, etc.

It was a novel concept even though the coins were able to rattle around at the time.

There were many non-believers including Dave Bowers and me. Despite the non-believers and the fact that NGC came around a year later showed that this was an idea whose time had come.

Much credit must go to Alan Hager (despite what I think of the man) who invented the first slab and sold it to PCGS.

I have one of his Accugrade of Connecticut holders (circa 1984) and it is clear that he was the first one to come up with the novel concept.

PCGS just put Hager's slab and added guaranteeing the grade which then made the concept succeed..

nwcs

Perhaps the long timers underestimated the flaws in the hobby and the market was waiting for someone to build a better mousetrap.

CLASSICS

grading.....was the problem........a lot, and i mean a lot of people got stuck with many overgraded, and therefore over priced coins....it seemed everyone had thier own idea of what a grade was.......years ago there was..unc....bu...select unc.....select bu....nice bu...very nice bu...bright...tarnished...etc. etc., so how to take all the guess work out of it?...alan hagger invented the slab, david hall took it one step futher, to promote sight unseen coin trading between a network of dealers, coins no longer were just a hobby, coins were now a business, many people, though not all of them, liked the idea. it has taken the guess work out for many who do not know how to grade coins, or dont have the time to learn, and today this is what we have...

Barry

Grading abuse by dealers.

What I wonder is how Stack's still gets away with auctioning the material they do with the majority being raw.

topstuf

They stuck to it. Believe it or not, I was trying to come up with a seal for Capital plastic holders back in the mid 70's. Just never followed through. My fault. One of life's regrets.