PCGS Set Registry in the goodle days.............

Dog97

The first published Registry was listed in 1997 and ahhhh.......those were the days! Life was simple then and collecting was too. The Registry did have Weights and rules back then, believe it or not, but they were much simpler, you didn't need a team of coin dealing lawyers to tell you what it all meant. The following is PCGS's explaination for why a certian set might outrank another even though the total numerical grade is lower. I c&p this word for word from my PCGS paperwork:

A set's average grade is considered along the set's completeness to determine how the sets are ranked. While not making a direct rank contribution, copper coin colors, cameo, deep-cameo, full head, full bell lines, and full bands designations are noted. In other words, the set's individual rank is more than a simple order list by average grade. There is some subjective judgment involved. For example, the average grade of Eliot Goldman's Morgan dollar set was 65.90 while the average grade of George Bodway's set was 65.72. However, many of the power dates in Goldman's set were "only" MS64 and MS65 while many of the power pieces in the Bodway collection were finest known MS66, 67 & 68 coins. Consequently, we ranked the Bodway collection ahead of the Goldman collection.

That was the weighting system in 1997!

Who had heard of the Registry then? Let's see the major sets........
Don R Ligon had a 64.43 IHC set 100% Red.
A guy named Stewart Blay had a Lincoln set 1909-1943 that graded MS 66.47 100% complete and 99% of his coins were Red.
D.E.W. had 3 Proof Lib Nic sets at 65.42, 65, & 65.
Larry Whitlow & Tom McCarrol had Buffalo sets that graded 66.47 & 65.93.
Legend had the Trade Dollar wrapped up with a 65.35 MS set & Mark Mitchel had a Proof 66 set but was only77% complete.
Jack Lee, NFL, David J. Ames, MTB & JWA ruled the Morgans.
Sil DiGenova, Ed Trumpeter, Harry Bass, and Dr Steve Duckor had the gold.

There were only 57 catagories of sets and there was 112 sets registered.

ccrdragon

Interesting idea - throw out the weights and judge the set on it's merits!

CarlWohlforth

I heard of it. It took me a few years and I made it into the 2000 Registry with proof Jefferson nickels. I think that was the final year of the printed registry. My wife really loved seeing our name in print!

cladking

Did they even have computers back then?

Seriously, '97 is prehistory in the coin hobby which has emerged over the
last few years. And the pace of change is likely to pick up further as more
people enter the hobby and feel more comfortable with computers.

I remember the first couple years there weren't even any clad sets in the
registries.

CarlWohlforth

Cladking, the Registry was on paper only. You had to fill out a form listing your coins and snail mail it in.

Dog97

cladking
In 1997 there wasn't hardly even any clads in PCGS slabs. There were all the Proof 69 Dcams you wanted but as far as the 10 different denomination & mm combinations of biz strikes for my year some were simply non-existant or unobtainable.
For example according to the 1998 Pop Report
97-P Lincoln: 13 total graded
97-D Lincoln: 16 total graded
97-P Jefferson: 4 total graded (1-65 non-FS, 1-62FS, 1-64FS, 1-65FS)
97-D Jefferson 2 total graded (64FS)
97 P Rosevelt: 0 Graded
97-D Rosevelt: 2 Total Graded (1-65, 1-66)
97-P Washington: 2 Total graded (1-63, 1-66) {no 67 until around 2001}
97-D Washington: 6 total Graded (1-64, 1-65, 2-66, 2-67) {67 was Poptop 2 until around 2001 or 02}
97-P Kennedy: Total Graded 12 (1-63,1-65, 3-66, 7-67) {67 was Poptop 2 until around 2002
97-D Kennedy: Total Graded 11 (1-63, 2-64, 3-65, 3-66, 2-67) {67 was Poptop 2 until around 2002}

nwcs

How could the coins be judged on their merits unless the people send the collection in? They were still judging by the numbers.

I like the registry as it is today. More people can participate. More variety. Seems that only the rich played in those days.

RELLA

I made it into the last print version of the registry also. I don't even remember what for...someone asked me if I knew about it after the fact. I also had the #8 MS Lincoln Wheat set at one time; that identical set would be 34th current finest today.

RELLA