Anyone ever heard of these guys?

ASUtodd

I was at a coin show in Winston Salem today and just about EVERYONE had coins slabbed by SEGS. Here is the link to their site. I have personally never heard of the company so I did not buy any of the coins they graded. I know this is a lower tiered grading service, compared to PCGS, but I didn't know if any of you have had the chance to "grade" their work. I was going to buy a 1901 2 Mark coin graded MS64 in a SEGS holder when I asked the guy what he thought this coin would crossover to PCGS as. Seeing as how the SEGS was graded higher than a PCGS would have been he said, oh easily a MS66 or 67. The coin was beautiful, and I should have bought it but because it was slabbed he wanted an outrageous amount for it. I figure If I'm going to pay that much I want it in a PCGS holder. Anyways, back to the original question, anyone heard of these guys? New to me...
Todd

worldcoinguy

Todd,
Use caution with SEGS - there have been many threads on the liteside that have discussed SEGS in detail. In general many of the coins you find in their slabs show evidence of cleaning, and would probably not cross to PCGS, NGC, or ANACS. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, so buy the coin and not the holder.
A few years back, my local dealer (who has a great eye for coins) sold me a scarce date US Indian Head cent in a NNT holder. I was a bit skeptical of the holder, but he felt it was a solid coin. I busted it out and sent it to ANACS to keep it consistent with the set I was building at the time, and it went from EF-40 to AU-58. I think this is more the exception to the rule, but it can happen.
Brent

ASUtodd

I figured as much, specially when the guy said, "He gave me a great deal on grading a bunch of my coins!" My friend then said, "Well I guess his overhead is low working out of his basement". Well the guy didn't find it as humurous as we did..... He was a nice guy so he took it in stride. It was weird, about 70-80% of the show had SEGS holder. Strange because I ahve never seen them before. Oh well, live and learn.
Todd

farthing

SEGS (and Larry Briggs) are fairly well known. There was a lot of debate on the light side over whether or not SEGS should have been included by eBay in the list of trusted slabs. There slabs are known to be the toughest to crack out.

They were well known for the variety attribution - ex: VAM numbers. Search over on the light side for either SEGS or Briggs if you want to know more.