PCGS Grading Contest

au58

The other day, I was looking at the interim PCGS grading contest scores for this year's event and the following question occurred to me:

Given that PCGS uses consensus grading, how good would their own graders do flying solo?

MrEureka

I believe HRH has said that individual PCGS graders get about 75% of the coins "right".

I don't know exactly how that translates into World Series grades, but I believe that PCGS graders would be right up there with most of the finalists.

au58

Yes, I would like to think that the PCGS graders would be right up there. But the question is my mind, which I didn't state very well, was how good are the pros and the amateurs compared to PCGS. If the average (or normalized) score for PCGS graders is really only 75% (and I don't know if that is valid), does that mean that the best amateurs are as good as the graders at PCGS?

greghansen

does that mean that the best amateurs are as good as the graders at PCGS?

IMO, No. I've participated in this contest both years. By my scores, it is safe to say I will never be grading professionally. Simply by participating, however, I can see some significant differences between this contest and 'real world' professional grading.

First, were only talking about 40 coins in the contest. This is not a large enough sample size to gauge a contestants breadth of knowledge. It is my belief that full time graders have a far wider range of experience than contestants. The scoring differences would become more apparent if you graded across more series and a larger number of coins.

Secondly, the conditions for the contest call for 30 minutes to view the coins. That is not a physically or mentally challenging block of time. Professional graders are at it daily, many hours a day. I know myself, after 2 or 3 days at a major show, the thought of getting up the next day to go start grading coins all day, would drive me crazy. Fact is, most amateurs, even the best ones, don't have the mental/physical tools required to grade on a full time basis day in and day out.

What the test scores mean, is that over a small sampling of 40 coins, the best amataurs can approach the level of grading this small lot as the professionals. To extrapolate any conclusions beyond that would be a mistake IMO.

Conder101

If I remember correctly some former PCGS graders competed last year and their scores were in the 70 -75% range.