What is the best [and worse] grading service and why?

GoldCoinLover

What is the best [and worse] grading service and why?

airplanenut

You can't vote for two items...

PCGS, NGC, and ANACS are the top three.

ACG, SEGS, and PCI are third tier

ICG is somewhere in the middle depending on the series

GoldCoinLover

Hmm good point

I just took out the poll. It's best that way. Just explain your opinion of the best and worse grading service

Russ

<< <i>ACG, SEGS, and PCI are third tier >>



Don't forget NTC and Trugrade.

Russ, NCNE

JrGMan2004

Agree with jeremy and Russ there... but it depends on what you're submitting and why, for which service to use. PCGS is the most conservative, and heavilly market accepted. NGC tends to be looser, but also is probally more accurate with certain series than maybe PCGS is, they also attribute more varieties than PCGS. For varieties and Errors, ANACS is the way to go. For a fee, they will even look it up and find the proper attribution for a coin.

foodude

I'll just answer it this way ... I use PCGS and NGC in that order. Their standards, while different in some aspects, and the latter looser in some cases, are basically in line with the grading standards I use. In addition, I think their standards are more in line with the pricing information I use (e.g., Grey Sheets, PCGS Guide, Heritage Guide, Teletrade Prices realized, etc.). I also would also use ANACS for having relatively expensive problem coins net graded/etc., as well as for some varieties not recognized by NGC or PCGS.

Conder101

No opinion on what service is best but ACG has to be the worst. I don't know of any other service that sues people for disagreeing with their grading publicly

dorkkarl

they're all pretty much equivalent to me. well ok, one's that don't guarantee authenticity are a bit worse than the others i guess.

K S

Steve27

PCGS is both the best and worst IMO. They are the best because they grade conservatively, and thus coins in their slabs are worth more money than other TPG services. However, because they grade so conservatively, they incorrectly grade a lot of coins, thus they are the worst as well.

keets

i'd like to propose a grading service phenomenon, if i may. it has to have one assumption, though, that being that there is one service that the hobby (market) appreciates more and so the best coins will gravitate to it. for the sake of arguement we'll assume that service to be PCGS and you can rank all the others in descending order.

here's the assumption-----all coins, without regard to their present holder, will be picked over, with the choice examples ultimately ending up in the market choice holder. this serves to skew the overall perception of any service because the "bad get worse" and the "good get better." this is a good reason why the CW experiment several months back needs to be done on a larger and more regular basis. what i currently see is the market being flooded with NGC holdered coins for varying reasons, one of them being that they are a good quality grading service. my instincts tell me that the choice coins that they are currently holdering will eventually end up in the market choice PCGS holders and result in an apparent glut of NGC coins which we see as average.

perhaps the only way to truly know which service is the best is to become profecient at grading a particular area and submit known grade coins.

al h.

haletj

PCGS, but they still don't grade as accurately as I feel they should. It would be nice if a 100% reliable service existed. One that gave the same grade to the same coin every time. No more crackouts, no more changes in standards as time or market conditions change, etc....