PCGS's Response to the JadeCoin situation and the resulting article

FrattLaw

Linked below is an article addressing some of the issues in reference to the Jadecoin situation and I, as well as numerous others, are curious as to PCGS's response. As well as to your response since it appears that this article contains many statements attributed to you.

Have The Mighty Fallen?

Further, why is it your position that PCGS doesn't guaranty pedigrees? And if that in fact is your position, what is your basis for such?

Michael

homerunhall

Michael, The whole "Jade Coin" thing is pretty interesting for the following reasons...

1. People always assume the worst and always believe everything they read. A lot of statements being made (and I haven't seen every statement, but a lot of it has been shown to me) are not coming from Jade Coin principles and none of the statements being made are coming from PCGS. Yet most people seem to believe the story as it is told by third parties. I believe that in your profession you would call a lot of this hearsay. But I'm fascinated that so many people take virtually everything that is being said by third parties as a cold hard fact.

2. PCGS has spent millions of dollars under the terms of its grading guarantee...millions! We buy back coins every month. If we make a mistake we take care of it...period, end of story. And as far as I know there is only one other grading service that has a grading guarantee. If you have a mis-attributed coin, or a counterfeit, or a grading problem, or a coin that turns in the holder, and it's from another grading service, how much of your loss will that grading service cover. With the exception of PCGS and one other service, I believe you get zilch from the other guys. It's incredible that after taking care of so many people...after standing behind our service for 18 years and making sure that we were the ones who paid for our mistakes, a few people claim we didn't take care of one situation and others scream "foul" without even the slightest idea of the true facts.

I have no idea what these people are trying to accomplish with all this stuff that's appearing on the message boards, but I can assure you that these people do not care about you and your coins.

I do not want to spend a lot of time on this because there are much more important things to do...like grading your coins. However, you asked and I told you I'd answer your questions. So I will give you one specific example of one of the outright lies and I'll explain it in detail.

One of these articles or whatever you call them claims that I told someone something to the effect that "I don't care about the little guys." That is simply total and complete bs because that is exactly the opposite of what I think and how PCGS operates.

Here's how I/we feel about the little guy/big guy issue. There are two types of ways we view customers. First...we think of customers as either dealers or collectors. Second, we think of customers as either big submitters or little submitters. The fact is that I/we cut more slack with collectors than dealers and we are more gentle with small customers than big customers. That's the fact.


I'll give you two examples. When we buy back coins under the terms of our guarantee, we pay collectors relatively more than we pay dealers. We are obligated to pay market value, which we have sole discretion to determine. So dealers get the wholesale price, period, end of story...and I usually overpay collectors a little. Seond example, if someone has a question about a coin's grade, i.e. if someone wonders why their coin did not grade higher, and they are a small and/or relatively new customer, I/we will go out of our way to tell the customer to send the coin in for a complimentary review. I do this even though I know that it is almost 100% that the PCGS grade is right and the customer just doesn't have the eye to know the difference. Big customers know better than to ask for a free review because they know I'm not going to do anything for them in terms of a second look unless they have a really good story. I/we try to help all of our customers, big or small, dealers or collectors, but I/we are definitely gentle on the little guys.

Now, does that sound like I/we don't care about the little guy?

The fact is that we started PCGS to take care of the little guy...to help those who had previously been at the mercy of the big pros.

That's all I'm going to say about Jade Coin or any other customer dispute. Believe what you want but we take care of our customers and we make good on our mistakes. It's the way we've done business for 18 years and it's one of the major reasons why we have remained the market leader for nearly two decades. We have nothing to gain by treating any coin or customer with anything less than the greatest respect.

David