Options
My recent experience with ICG
koincollect
Posts: 446 ✭✭✭
I had recently posted about the delays ICG took in grading my 15 day 7 coin special submission. There were a couple of difficult coins and medals but I took care of mentioning the origins of the medals and tokens in the submission. I did not expect them to take 15 days, but it took 3 months for them and only 2 got slabbed. 
One coin got BB'ed, but I knew it was a 50-50 chance and was okay with it. The rest medals and tokens were all "no graded" with two of them going to expert consultants for authentication and had comments on them that the consultants could not find the origin of the tokens. The rest had no comment on them as to why they were not graded. I did get a 7 for the price of 5 coupon for them for getting the no-grades.
Since I had very clearly identified all tokens and medals, I decided to write to ICG about this. I got a reply that they were not able to identify and find reference to any of them and thus could not grade them (note that 2 of the 4 did not even go to the consultants). I wrote back pointing to websites which give reference to the numismatic papers for these, and got a reply that "We could not authenticate them. We don't use internet sites for authentication.", which is dumb as I was pointing to sites which give the paper number which they can look up to!
I decided not to pursue the matter further and won't be going back to them anytime soon, which is a pity as they are conservative in their grading of regular coins in Krause and I prefer them for older coins.
I feel ripped off as there seems to be little effort on their part and they did not even reference the BHM number on the one token that got graded!
ICG's claim on their website that "ICG prides its self on being able to authenticate any coin that will fit into the ICG tamper-evident holder. No other grading service can make the same claim." does not feel to be for world tokens and medals.
One coin got BB'ed, but I knew it was a 50-50 chance and was okay with it. The rest medals and tokens were all "no graded" with two of them going to expert consultants for authentication and had comments on them that the consultants could not find the origin of the tokens. The rest had no comment on them as to why they were not graded. I did get a 7 for the price of 5 coupon for them for getting the no-grades.Since I had very clearly identified all tokens and medals, I decided to write to ICG about this. I got a reply that they were not able to identify and find reference to any of them and thus could not grade them (note that 2 of the 4 did not even go to the consultants). I wrote back pointing to websites which give reference to the numismatic papers for these, and got a reply that "We could not authenticate them. We don't use internet sites for authentication.", which is dumb as I was pointing to sites which give the paper number which they can look up to!
I decided not to pursue the matter further and won't be going back to them anytime soon, which is a pity as they are conservative in their grading of regular coins in Krause and I prefer them for older coins.
I feel ripped off as there seems to be little effort on their part and they did not even reference the BHM number on the one token that got graded!
ICG's claim on their website that "ICG prides its self on being able to authenticate any coin that will fit into the ICG tamper-evident holder. No other grading service can make the same claim." does not feel to be for world tokens and medals.
0