Are some Dealers getting desperate?

GOLDSAINT

Has anyone else noticed a deterioration in the grading of many coins as this market heats up? Even many of the larger dealers on ebay seem desperate for type coins in higher grades as time goes on. Below are two bust halves both graded as XF/AU. In my mind these are not even close. Coin dealers like all business people have to keep their products moving, but reputation in our area is everything! What will XF/AU coins look like in a couple more years of a HOT market?

roadrunner

The problems with grading raw coins has been with us forever. I stunk in the 1970's when I first started buying worthwhile coins and it has carried on ever since. Some of the most well-respected slab dealers today were raw coin hucksters in the 1960's, 70's, and early 80's. Times change though. Now all we have to worry about is grading services wandering standards that still allow much of the same abuses only to a much lower scale than before.

Raw coins have always been a problem, and always will. If you buy raw, you'd better be on your guard. I'd say the situation is much improved with the bigger dealers today. But you cannot count all the Johnny-come-latelies on ebay that are just starting out and see a great con game available to them. I've played this game for 30 years and still take a hit on probably 20% of the raw coins I buy.
And I still don't get the message or take my own advice. And it doesn't help either when the grading services take 1 to 3 submissions to grade the coin properly.

roadrunner

XpipedreamR

<< <i>Has anyone else noticed a deterioration in the grading of many coins... >>





I don't think this is anything new, either.

Rittenhouse

Not only is this nothing new in raw coins, it's nothing new in slabs either. Most of the slabs around today would have been graded a full grade lower 10 years ago. But, like I heard one major grading service principal say "We're gonna do what our customer want."

I'll leave you with one more famous quote: "Grading, an excuse for price."

Barry

I happened to notice that coin on Ebay this morning. The seller is Ernie. He's like ACG - he's consistent in his overgrading.

clw54

At coin shows I see dealers selling Morgans with no hair detail and even missing rims as VG, Barber halves with no Liberty as F, that kind of thing. It makes me wonder how they stay in business. Or maybe that is how they stay in business.

291fifth

The consistent overgrading of raw coins, by both dealers and collectors, has been a constant in the hobby for the 42 years I have been involved in it. There is nothing new here.

tradedollarnut

I stunk in the 1970's

I love the smell of submarine oil in the morning!

dragon

I don't know if dealers are getting desperate however I have noticed that some dealers seem to now be significantly overdescribing otherwise average coins for the grade. I see many just so-so coins now being touted as PQ, PQ+, a just miss MSXX, etc. from dealers that didn't used to normally do this.

It's probably due to dealers having a hard time actually finding really nice coins for the grade these days, so they are forced to talk up what they have to make sales.

dragon

tradedollarnut

I think dealers CAN still find nice coins - but they have to pay sooo strong when they do that they are forced to hype them in order to sell them. The average collector has a lot of price resistance because the information that they rely upon - Trends, Greysheet, CU Price Guide, etc - are hopelessly out of date.

EVillageProwler

The average collector has a lot of price resistance because the information that they rely upon - Trends, Greysheet, CU Price Guide, etc - are hopelessly out of date.

Good point. The price "guides" cannot be seen as driving the market; that would be patently wrong. So, they have to lag. Hopefully, they lag by a very small amount. But, the amount and direction of variance varies from series to series and sometimes even date to date.

I wonder if the so-called average collector (those who, in this context, believe in those price guides religiously) have actually tried calling CW or Greysheet and tried to buy anything from them?

EVP

GOLDSAINT

Thanks for your comments! I think this is interesting about collectors using so many publised guides to base their pricing on. 25 years ago when I was on the dealer side of the fence collectors only had Red Books.
In the small shop I had we kept the grey sheets in the back. Anyone now with computer sense can get 10 price opinions in minutes, but the auction prices seem to be nearly double many shows, Eaby, Yahoo etc. So who is setting the market? The higher end auctions or the Net?