One forgets that prior to the "$86k" sale of 95-W, a 95-W coin (with even a lower PCGS population at the time) sold for around $20k, give or take, at Stacks. So, now, years later with the pop sharply higher in PR70DC the 95-W is selling for about just 5%-10% less than the Stacks sales price when the pop was just 5 or 6 or 7 (someone can look it up). The fact that collectors started paying 2x and 3x and 4x the Stacks public auction price - it made no sense to me then and makes no sense to me now. I just ask myself why I kept my PR70DC 95-W coin in my personal collection the whole time instead of just selling it for $40k or $50k and rebuying one for $20k later! Me - bad. I have tried to teach my son to STOP BEING A COLLECTOR like his old man.
As far as the pop having stayed at 1 or 2 for many years on the 95-W - remember PCGS had stopped grading PR70DC Silver Eagles (and MS70's for that matter) for quite a while there for a number of reasons, including in the later years trying to figure out why the coins were spotting in the holder.
Conclusion - it's "complicated" when it comes to analyzing the 95-W and its price history. To be honest, I could have written 2 or 3 more pages on just this one coin, but you get the idea.
As always, just my two cents.
Wondercoin
Please visit my website at www.wondercoins.com and my ebay auctions under my user name www.wondercoin.com.
What is more important than the population of any given grade is the ratio of that population to the total population of the coin. The statistics in the article are meaningless without this.
I think the biggest change that occurred over this time period was to offer plus grading starting in 2010. This opened the flood gates in resubmission's. There was now a financial incentive to get a plus grade or more by doing a regrade. This could even be done without the risk of cracking the coin out of the holder.
There was now no downside other than the cost of the re-grade. It was also more likely to get some kind of upgrade, even it was only a +. I recently did a submission of 50 coins to be re-graded at a cost of around $2,000. I probably would not have done this if the only option was a full point upgrade or if I had to take the risk of cracking the coin out to be re-graded. I also felt like I had to do this, since I watched the pops grow over the last 10 years. I have some coins that were near the top of the pops, only to passed up by many + graded and full point upgrades over the last 10 years.
12 of the 50 coins upgraded, 9 by a + and 3 by a full grade. The increase in value far exceeded the re-grade costs.
So in my own small part I caused some grade inflation. Was the current grade the correct grade or was the old grade the correct grade for the 3 that upgraded by a full point. It's hard to say because I held most of the coins for 10 years, it might have been the only two times the coins were ever graded. What if I submitted them multiple times, would I get a few more to upgrade by a point and lead to more grade inflation. That seems to be the case of what is happening today in the market.
I would guess that velocity of grading events is also increasing because of CAC. I sold some coins via GreatCollections, where I didn't have them re-graded first, but had them sent to CAC before being auctioned. I have noticed that several of those coins that received a CAC bean, were to appear later in new holder upgraded by a + or a full point or even a point and a +.
Some even had a CAC sticker at the higher grade. It seems that older holder + CAC, pretty much means that it will bought by someone who try's for the regrade to max out the grade and value. That's just the way it is, if you don't try to max out the value of your coins before you sell them by re-grading them, someone else will.
I have PCGS and NGC pop reports from 1998, 2001, 2003, 2007 and can compare them. Now that's actual useful data as to what occurred in the first 20 years of TPGs.
Off-topic, but where would you stumble across something like this? Is it in print or digital? I'm very curious to see what it looked like in the past.
@dpoole said:
One does wonder about the motive for throwing down this gauntlet and making such a public and contentious accusation, without any more dispassionate stats to back it up. Why the provocation? Why now?
Maybe the backlash from him throwing PCGS out of their registry. Has to defend it
mark
I agree with the justification for no longer allowing PCGS in their registry. A couple cherry-picked issues does not make an all-inclusive argument.
I did receive that communique....and was quite surprised. Not sure where it will go from here.... but normally, this shot across the bow is the opening for a competitive battle royal....Cheers, RickO
Skimmed right over the thread title several times since I did not know who Salzberg was.
I am thinking that a lot of coins from ATS are crossing-over to PCGS holders and quite a bit of crack-outs for (re)submission are possibilities, not necessarily "hoards" being brought into the market.
oih82w8 = Oh I Hate To Wait _defectus patientia_aka...Dr. Defecto - Curator of RMO's
I haven't posted on this topic yet even though I started the thread -- been enjoying reading people's perspectives.
My thoughts after reading Mark's message was -- well, that was unnecessary. What is the edification that comes from reading that? It might be an opinion, but the kind of an opinion a leader might need to think about whether or not he/she should discuss publicly. Might be better left for one/one conversations.
Now on a more scientific note, I kind of laughed. I run a Big Data software company that focuses on analytics, and I can tell you that the fact that it snowed today has nothing to do with the fact that my teenage daughter doesn't want to go to school. She never wants to go to school
The thing is that, correlation does not imply causation -- but that is what Mark is suggesting. Enjoy the hobby and don't get caught up in emotional rhetoric.
I found Salzberg's article to be alarming. He does make an excellent point but I do not think that his examples necessessarily make his case for the following reasons:
1. One has to gauge the popflation by comparing the total population of graded coins at both PCGS and NCG over a 10-20 year time frame. One might expect that the real population of modern coins will increase as a function of time at a much greater rate than coins that are over 100 years old.
2. One has to gauge the gradeflation as a few have posted by comparing by comparing the % to the total population and then compare the statistical distribution.
3. On older coins the actual population will always be less due to crackouts and maybe even crossovers. I have seen TrueViews of the same coin in CoinFacts with three different grades. And this just proves that both gradeflation and popflation exist in pop reports. Hopefully, one day all top pop coins will have TrueViews so that a reasonable estimate of population can be made for top pop coins which are subject to the greatest price deflation as pointed out by Salzberg.
4. I cannot find population by history on PCGS web site or on CoinFacts. Or am I missing something. I feel I need to understand the popflation and gradeflation on all of my significant coins.
I think it's unrealistic for so many to invest much in the pops when such a vast amount of coins have been through the system an untold number of times. It reflects hardly anything accurately at this point except for how many coins have been graded by a company.
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@AMRC said:
By my math, it is much harder to cross a PCGS coin into NGC then the other way around. Not to say that has anything to do with grading (more like feuding), but just saying what my experience has shown.
I'm 100%. 0 for 0
+1
I would be curious to know the reasoning behind doing this, unless it is for Registry sets. Otherwise, I would prefer to go outside and simply start throwing $100 bills into the wind.
How about a coin census as currently holdered? Do it with the stipulation that over the period of the census, If you don't submit the current label information of all your coins, you lose the right to the grade guarantee. That'd be more incentive than $0.50 for each old label (or was that ATS). I know this is legally and logistically near to impossible but it'd be nice to have true POP reports.
--- below is a cut/paste from the Dayne West thread about the topic that I made earlier this morning.
I just read part of the e-mail, came here to see if anything had been posted prior to starting a thread. I didn't read the entire message but it does seem a bit harsh, an indictment of PCGS' integrity with a subtle suggestion that it is intentional and PCGS is deflating the value of the coin market. to that end, I see it as a little more than just a "shot fired across the bow" of the PCGS ship.
I don't know where the other thread is or how much discussion this received. I view it as a declaration of some type and a subtle attempt to sway collectors/submitters/buyers away from PCGS. based on what I have seen during the past 16 years I don't expect that to succeed but I do expect negative fallout for NGC.
what is the sense of doing this and is it being discussed at SleepyHollow??
PCGS put out a PR last week that showed the top 20 highest price coins that sold last year where all graded by PCGS. That's domination. PCGS changed their Modern marketing last year and now does as many Modern coins as NGC. PCGS signed the deal with the Chinese Mint last summer and has just started to crank out hundreds of thousands of coins. That's world domination.
I can't comment on the technical or historical aspects that many of you have done so well on. But from an investor standpoint I would guess that NGC may be near insolvency. The Vintage coins all go to PCGS and Vintage is where all the high margins are. Modern is now 50/50 and this is a low margin bulk business. Chinese coins are going to PCGS in bulk. CLCT just took out a $10M loan to keep the pressure on. I have no dog in this fight at the moment but it looks like a price war is occurring and NGC is losing out big time.
No corporate head does anything on his own without being encouraged to do so by other business managers; with the high success rate with cac at gem and above with both P and N I don't see the big issue. Maybe Salzberg is taking cac on as well.
I'm breaking out the popcorn reading Mark's diatribe.
As a small time, rookie collector, I don't have much skin in the top pop issues raised. Even lower down the food chain, my collection is not significant enough to fret over how grade inflation impacts its value.
Seated Half Society member #38 "Got a flaming heart, can't get my fill"
@TommyType said:
This may have been mentioned....But:
The current PCGS pop report, (as of 6:30PM PST), shows 33 1912S in MS-66, and NOT the 50 mentioned in the letter. So, assuming Salzberg wasn't making up data, (I highly doubt he was), then someone has corrected the records? Reviewed the CoinFact pictures? (Which we all know contains some serious duplication). Don't know. But apparently, the War is ON!
Anyway, the current pop reports show:
Count of PCGS 66 and 66+ is 35 out of 2670 = 1.3%
Count of NGC 66 is 14 out of 1409 = 1.0%
Guess we can argue why....but it isn't all that different.
This was 50 on Sunday. Someone is doing a bunch of crack outs with MS65's and MS66's and then sending back in the inserts. These numbers go up and down all the time. (MS64's do not change much)
Collector and Researcher of Liberty Head Nickels. ANA LM-6053
OK, so his graphs indicate that increased supply causes a drop in prices. That's Economics 101.
What his article does not prove is whether or not PCGS is accurately grading those MS-66+ coins. If they do, and there just happens to be more of them (because more people submit coins for grading, or whatever reason), then what's his point?
To prove gradeflation it's not enough to show that more coins have been assigned a certain grade, you need to show that the grade isn't justified. His article doesn't even attempt to make such a claim.
A strange letter. I would be more impressed with tougher grading standards that showed up in the slabs. The guy should put his money where his mouth is, buy the coins and put them in a NGC slab with the correct top pop grade and drive the price back where it belongs. If the coin deserves the grade/price then it should be no trouble to reverse the trend and make a decent profit doing it.
"May the silver waves that bear you heavenward be filled with love’s whisperings"
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown
@AMRC said:
By my math, it is much harder to cross a PCGS coin into NGC then the other way around. Not to say that has anything to do with grading (more like feuding), but just saying what my experience has shown.
I'm 100%. 0 for 0
+1
I would be curious to know the reasoning behind doing this, unless it is for Registry sets. Otherwise, I would prefer to go outside and simply start throwing $100 bills into the wind.
Exactly right. I helped put together the Moser Collection (#1 Morgan set @ NGC), and it seemed (sorry no empirical evidence), that getting those PCGS top/pop[ers] into NGC plastic was pretty much impossible.
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@AMRC said:
By my math, it is much harder to cross a PCGS coin into NGC then the other way around. Not to say that has anything to do with grading (more like feuding), but just saying what my experience has shown.
I'm 100%. 0 for 0
+1
I would be curious to know the reasoning behind doing this, unless it is for Registry sets. Otherwise, I would prefer to go outside and simply start throwing $100 bills into the wind.
Exactly right. I helped put together the Moser Collection (#1 Morgan set @ NGC), and it seemed (sorry no empirical evidence), that getting those PCGS top/pop[ers] into NGC plastic was pretty much impossible.
I agree it is the registry. They changed the rules to no longer allow PCGS graded coins in their sets. They recently had a "sweet" crossover offer for any PCGS coins you had in one of your NGC sets. I suspect this email is to try and justify the need to cross the coin beyond just the registry.
Collector and Researcher of Liberty Head Nickels. ANA LM-6053
In a nutshell: NGC has consistently graded the coin higher than PCGS but PCGS is slowly catching up. In essence "we are looser but we're more consistent in that looseness over time than they are". Lol
@Wabbit2313 said:
I met this guy recently and talk about arrogant by the way. Here is the lovely NGC MS-69 Morgan. I have MANY PCGS 67's that blow his 69 away! I posted one I just had graded at FUN right below the NGC coin. I invite you to click on the image and look up close. A 69 should be flawless to the eye.
My 67, graded less than 2 weeks ago!!
What a stunner! I like your 67 better.
Don't forget to include me in your generous giveaway!
Does this represent a new era of direct, potentially hostile, competition between the "Big Two"? Or does PCGS just let it run off their back, and we go back to the previous status of peaceful coexistence? (At least, that's how it looked in my little corner of the numismatic world).
Either way, it may not mean much to those of us puttering along with our little collections...but it COULD:
It could be the impetus to tighten standards again? By both sides?
Increased, cut throat, crossover competition?
(Dare we hope), Price competition?
Or, just sniping at each other with more, and more bizarre, examples of why "the other guy" is ruining the hobby?
I kind of assume that the principles of the two companies know each other fairly well. It's not like they can AVOID each other. I guess we might find out how what kind of relationship it is.
Does this represent a new era of direct, potentially hostile, competition between the "Big Two"? Or does PCGS just let it run off their back, and we go back to the previous status of peaceful coexistence? (At least, that's how it looked in my little corner of the numismatic world).
Either way, it may not mean much to those of us puttering along with our little collections...but it COULD:
It could be the impetus to tighten standards again? By both sides?
Increased, cut throat, crossover competition?
(Dare we hope), Price competition?
Or, just sniping at each other with more, and more bizarre, examples of why "the other guy" is ruining the hobby?
I kind of assume that the principles of the two companies know each other fairly well. It's not like they can AVOID each other. I guess we might find out how what kind of relationship it is.
You assume this to be the first volley. The first (or most significant first volley) was PCGS cutting it's bulk Modern pricing at the start of 2016. That ate into NGC's dominant Modern segment. Prior to last year, NGC had 70% of the Modern market, PCGS had 70% of the Vintage market. PCGS has kept its Vintage lead and is now doing 50/50 in Moderns. This is the time of year when corporations know last years numbers. The Board of NGC was probably briefed in the last few days and scolded Salzberg for losing market share, and most likely have declining revenue and profits. So now he tries to create FUD.
I was at the NGC Luncheon at FUN 11 days ago; Mark S. was the speaker. He did touch on the topic of no longer accepting PCGS coins for Registry sets, but made no inference of the contents of the article. I've met Mark several times; he's a very intelligent personable guy with a low ego. I'm a bit surprised to see him throw this out there in such a public fashion, but he's certainly entitled to voice his opinion.
Most of us have acknowledged that there's grade inflation going on at PCGS; many of us have purchased coins in older PCGS slabs and cracked them out hoping for an upgrade. I find his article very informative and eye opening, but it doesn't disuede me from submitting coins to PCGS. I use both NGC and PCGS to grade my coins and believe they not interchangable but both provide a high quality service.
I believe PCGS started to realize themselves that grades were inflating a bit. Recent submissions seem to be more conservative than what I would expect a few years ago. I'm all for the two companies competing and keeping each other in check.
I for one am glad Mark opened up this can of worms. I think it is very important that HE address overgrading in the marketplace. Since he is willing to talk about it openly, lets have an open discussion.
There are flaws in some of his charts:
1) there were two rolls of 1912-S nickels that got graded by PCGS. This disqualifies that as an argument on overgrading. A bit of reserach would have done that easily. Recently there was a roll of 1911-D Lincolns as well.
2) Many of the modern issue populations are likely skewed by a change in the bulk submission program at PCGS, not a general overgrading scheme. These are submission taken away from NGC.
To properly see if there is overgrading, look at the actual coins. I saw how overgrading hurt the market for AU 1877 Indian cents. I documented it in the following article:
@ms70 said:
I think it's unrealistic for so many to invest much in the pops when such a vast amount of coins have been through the system an untold number of times. It reflects hardly anything accurately at this point except for how many coins have been graded by a company.
It's hard to know how accurate the pops are if certs from crackouts aren't being returned or are taking months to get removed from the pop data. It would seem a dumb move on the part of a crackout artist to seek an upgrade, but let the value of any upgrade be diminished by increasing the population.
OTOH with good pics, PCGS should be able to ascertain which coins are being resubmitted and remove the previous version from the pops.
There is one point that I want to bring up.
There are more and more coin being sent in to be graded in the 1900's.
Not just crack outs and regraded.
Point in case in a form of a question, How many 1995W silver eagles have not been graded?
Pat Vetter,Mercury Dime registry set,1938 Proof set registry,Pat & BJ Coins:724-325-7211
@ms70 said:
I think it's unrealistic for so many to invest much in the pops when such a vast amount of coins have been through the system an untold number of times. It reflects hardly anything accurately at this point except for how many coins have been graded by a company.
It's hard to know how accurate the pops are if certs from crackouts aren't being returned or are taking months to get removed from the pop data. It would seem a dumb move on the part of a crackout to seek an upgrade, but let the value of any upgrade be diminished by increasing the population.
OTOH with good pics, PCGS should be able to ascertain which coins are being resubmitted and remove the previous version from the pops.
I thought the SecurePlus "fingerprint" was supposed to do that
Numismatist. 50 year member ANA. Winner of four ANA Heath Literary Awards; three Wayte and Olga Raymond Literary Awards; Numismatist of the Year Award 2009, and Lifetime Achievement Award 2020. Winner numerous NLG Literary Awards.
I have PCGS and NGC pop reports from 1998, 2001, 2003, 2007 and can compare them. Now that's actual useful data as to what occurred in the first 20 years of TPGs.
Off-topic, but where would you stumble across something like this? Is it in print or digital? I'm very curious to see what it looked like in the past.
You need to find the old soft cover books as I don't think it's available anywhere on line. I can give you a quick synopsis of what I found various times up to approx 2003-2004. I reviewed pops across the entire silver, nickel, and copper type coin spectrums of 1816-1930 looking for things that stood out at me. In particular I was looking for NGC coins in grades of MS/PF 65 or higher that had much lower pops than PCGS pops, suggesting that NGC was probably grading such coins a lot stricter....and were raving buys at the usual 5-15% NGC discount.
Looking at everything from half cents to seated/trade dollars, I really expected to find a number of under-priced items. I found a single coin in a single grade....in reality, a hen's tooth. NGC MS66 trade dollars were graded considerably less often than PCGS MS66 trade dollars. Interesting that in grades of 63-65 this didn't apply. And I couldn't find a nice NGC MS66 trade dollar to buy anyways. A fruitless search. And as I mentioned earlier in the thread, a lot of high grade PCGS coins had much lower pops than NGC. MS65 capped bust halves were 4X more populous at NGC....a fact hard to ignore....considering both graded about the same number of MS bust halves. And what I visually saw in the market place during 2002-2006 supported those findings.
@PTVETTER said:
There is one point that I want to bring up.
There are more and more coin being sent in to be graded in the 1900's.
Not just crack outs and regraded.
Point in case in a form of a question, How many 1995W silver eagles have not been graded?
Probably most of them, but for one reason or another many won't be or aren't worth it.
When I read a thread like this, it makes me wish I had more time and some extra money to do the following...
Take a random sampling of coins across several different series and grades (nothing esoteric, mainstream 'generic' stuff) and submit them all RAW to PCGS on an economy order...send to CAC...note results. Crack coins carefully, submit all RAW to NGC on an economy order...send to CAC...note results.
Repeat above two more times.
In the end, you'd have 3 grading events at each service along with a CAC review for each grading event for each service.
I'm not going to hypothesize on what the results of something like this might be, but I will say, I think it would be interesting.
@ms70 said:
I think it's unrealistic for so many to invest much in the pops when such a vast amount of coins have been through the system an untold number of times. It reflects hardly anything accurately at this point except for how many coins have been graded by a company.
It's hard to know how accurate the pops are if certs from crackouts aren't being returned or are taking months to get removed from the pop data. It would seem a dumb move on the part of a crackout to seek an upgrade, but let the value of any upgrade be diminished by increasing the population.
OTOH with good pics, PCGS should be able to ascertain which coins are being resubmitted and remove the previous version from the pops.
I thought the SecurePlus "fingerprint" was supposed to do that
May not be the best tool if there aren't any detectable surface differences between 2 nearly identical coins. I would think that pics would be faster and show any stains, spots, toning, etc. that wouldn't show in a SP scan. SP is like a relief map of a coin.
Then again you have to think that the graders will recognize most of the coins. Let's say that there are 15 1913 Liberty Widgets graded ms66 by PCGS. If you laid all 15 side by side and covered the labels, there are probably Liberty Widget collects who could identify and discuss each one of them. So no doubt the graders recognize and probably remember each one.
@ms70 said:
I think it's unrealistic for so many to invest much in the pops when such a vast amount of coins have been through the system an untold number of times. It reflects hardly anything accurately at this point except for how many coins have been graded by a company.
It's hard to know how accurate the pops are if certs from crackouts aren't being returned or are taking months to get removed from the pop data. It would seem a dumb move on the part of a crackout to seek an upgrade, but let the value of any upgrade be diminished by increasing the population.
OTOH with good pics, PCGS should be able to ascertain which coins are being resubmitted and remove the previous version from the pops.
I thought the SecurePlus "fingerprint" was supposed to do that
The SecurePlus "fingerprint" COULD do that. I remember feeling excited when PCGS first came out with this, demonstrating the technology to objectively and routinely ID individual coins. I was hoping that eventually PCGS would fingerprint ALL submissions, but I do understand that the financial reward and incentive for them at this point is not there.
Too bad. This potentially could help with doctoring and counterfeiting, but also could help mightily with provenance, stabilizing grading standards and rendering pop figures more accurate.
Well, the guy knows more than I ever will so his opinion should matter. I think this is a direct result of submitting the same coin over and over and over again in hopes that one day it will upgrade. That's fine if the previous slab labels are also removed from the consensus, but we know they seldom are.
Trusting population reports is like playing craps. What's laughable is that once a coin upgrades THEN all the previous lables can be provided to PCGS to adjust the populations and the price goes up afterwards.
Easy game.
Moral to the story, don't believe population reports.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
I received many positive comments from those who have closely followed graded coin populations and prices. Others asked me, “Why? What is the difference between NGC and PCGS?” ... Quote from Mark Salzberg diatribe
Obviously he didn't bother to read or chose to totally ignore the 20 pages and 190+ postings on his own site's message board which were mostly critical of his move to exclude PCGS coins from his registry. It just goes to prove he had no intention of listening to any of his customer's or former customer's points of view despite his claims to the contrary.
Mr. Salzberg's company faces to two fundamental problems.
First, his company's grading standards are generally lower than those of PCGS. Although there have been a decent number of fairly graded and conservatively graded NGC coins that have entered market, by in large his company's standards have been lower for a long time. This dates back twenty years to the time when NGC bids on the "blind bid" Blue Sheet dipped below PCGS. The situation on the sign-seen market has followed accordingly.
Second, many of the NGC coins that were properly graded have been crossed over to PCGS. That makes the remaining population of NGC coins look worse. Most of the mistakes that NGC has made, stay in NGC holders. What is too often left are over graded, scrubbed-up pieces that only sell for steep discounts to those who know how to grade.
Mr. Salzberg can pontificate all he wants about how his competition's standards have slipped, but he'd best take a look at what's out on the bourse floor. It's not pretty.
I have a want list up on the Heritage site. Every time I see an NGC graded coin show up as a possibility to fill it, I almost groan because usually the piece is not going to make the grade.
I am sorry to have to say this because I would like to see real competition in the coin grading industry. Real competition keeps the competing companies on their toes, but sadly NGC is not providing it. This latest move has only isolated his company more from the serious hobbyists who could give Mr. Salzberg constructive suggestions. Sadly he doesn't want to listen. Instead he writes delusional missives like this one. Instead of competing with PCGS, he might soon have to worry about outdistancing ICG.
Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?
Comments
One forgets that prior to the "$86k" sale of 95-W, a 95-W coin (with even a lower PCGS population at the time) sold for around $20k, give or take, at Stacks. So, now, years later with the pop sharply higher in PR70DC the 95-W is selling for about just 5%-10% less than the Stacks sales price when the pop was just 5 or 6 or 7 (someone can look it up). The fact that collectors started paying 2x and 3x and 4x the Stacks public auction price - it made no sense to me then and makes no sense to me now. I just ask myself why I kept my PR70DC 95-W coin in my personal collection the whole time instead of just selling it for $40k or $50k and rebuying one for $20k later! Me - bad. I have tried to teach my son to STOP BEING A COLLECTOR like his old man.
As far as the pop having stayed at 1 or 2 for many years on the 95-W - remember PCGS had stopped grading PR70DC Silver Eagles (and MS70's for that matter) for quite a while there for a number of reasons, including in the later years trying to figure out why the coins were spotting in the holder.
Conclusion - it's "complicated" when it comes to analyzing the 95-W and its price history. To be honest, I could have written 2 or 3 more pages on just this one coin, but you get the idea.
As always, just my two cents.
Wondercoin
What is more important than the population of any given grade is the ratio of that population to the total population of the coin. The statistics in the article are meaningless without this.
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I think the biggest change that occurred over this time period was to offer plus grading starting in 2010. This opened the flood gates in resubmission's. There was now a financial incentive to get a plus grade or more by doing a regrade. This could even be done without the risk of cracking the coin out of the holder.
There was now no downside other than the cost of the re-grade. It was also more likely to get some kind of upgrade, even it was only a +. I recently did a submission of 50 coins to be re-graded at a cost of around $2,000. I probably would not have done this if the only option was a full point upgrade or if I had to take the risk of cracking the coin out to be re-graded. I also felt like I had to do this, since I watched the pops grow over the last 10 years. I have some coins that were near the top of the pops, only to passed up by many + graded and full point upgrades over the last 10 years.
12 of the 50 coins upgraded, 9 by a + and 3 by a full grade. The increase in value far exceeded the re-grade costs.
So in my own small part I caused some grade inflation. Was the current grade the correct grade or was the old grade the correct grade for the 3 that upgraded by a full point. It's hard to say because I held most of the coins for 10 years, it might have been the only two times the coins were ever graded. What if I submitted them multiple times, would I get a few more to upgrade by a point and lead to more grade inflation. That seems to be the case of what is happening today in the market.
I would guess that velocity of grading events is also increasing because of CAC. I sold some coins via GreatCollections, where I didn't have them re-graded first, but had them sent to CAC before being auctioned. I have noticed that several of those coins that received a CAC bean, were to appear later in new holder upgraded by a + or a full point or even a point and a +.
Some even had a CAC sticker at the higher grade. It seems that older holder + CAC, pretty much means that it will bought by someone who try's for the regrade to max out the grade and value. That's just the way it is, if you don't try to max out the value of your coins before you sell them by re-grading them, someone else will.
Off-topic, but where would you stumble across something like this? Is it in print or digital? I'm very curious to see what it looked like in the past.
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I agree with the justification for no longer allowing PCGS in their registry. A couple cherry-picked issues does not make an all-inclusive argument.
I did receive that communique....and was quite surprised. Not sure where it will go from here.... but normally, this shot across the bow is the opening for a competitive battle royal....Cheers, RickO
Skimmed right over the thread title several times since I did not know who Salzberg was.
I am thinking that a lot of coins from ATS are crossing-over to PCGS holders and quite a bit of crack-outs for (re)submission are possibilities, not necessarily "hoards" being brought into the market.
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I haven't posted on this topic yet even though I started the thread -- been enjoying reading people's perspectives.
My thoughts after reading Mark's message was -- well, that was unnecessary. What is the edification that comes from reading that? It might be an opinion, but the kind of an opinion a leader might need to think about whether or not he/she should discuss publicly. Might be better left for one/one conversations.
Now on a more scientific note, I kind of laughed. I run a Big Data software company that focuses on analytics, and I can tell you that the fact that it snowed today has nothing to do with the fact that my teenage daughter doesn't want to go to school. She never wants to go to school
The thing is that, correlation does not imply causation -- but that is what Mark is suggesting. Enjoy the hobby and don't get caught up in emotional rhetoric.
I found Salzberg's article to be alarming. He does make an excellent point but I do not think that his examples necessessarily make his case for the following reasons:
1. One has to gauge the popflation by comparing the total population of graded coins at both PCGS and NCG over a 10-20 year time frame. One might expect that the real population of modern coins will increase as a function of time at a much greater rate than coins that are over 100 years old.
2. One has to gauge the gradeflation as a few have posted by comparing by comparing the % to the total population and then compare the statistical distribution.
3. On older coins the actual population will always be less due to crackouts and maybe even crossovers. I have seen TrueViews of the same coin in CoinFacts with three different grades. And this just proves that both gradeflation and popflation exist in pop reports. Hopefully, one day all top pop coins will have TrueViews so that a reasonable estimate of population can be made for top pop coins which are subject to the greatest price deflation as pointed out by Salzberg.
4. I cannot find population by history on PCGS web site or on CoinFacts. Or am I missing something. I feel I need to understand the popflation and gradeflation on all of my significant coins.
OINK
I think it's unrealistic for so many to invest much in the pops when such a vast amount of coins have been through the system an untold number of times. It reflects hardly anything accurately at this point except for how many coins have been graded by a company.
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+1
I would be curious to know the reasoning behind doing this, unless it is for Registry sets. Otherwise, I would prefer to go outside and simply start throwing $100 bills into the wind.
Tom
How about a coin census as currently holdered? Do it with the stipulation that over the period of the census, If you don't submit the current label information of all your coins, you lose the right to the grade guarantee. That'd be more incentive than $0.50 for each old label (or was that ATS). I know this is legally and logistically near to impossible but it'd be nice to have true POP reports.
--- below is a cut/paste from the Dayne West thread about the topic that I made earlier this morning.
I just read part of the e-mail, came here to see if anything had been posted prior to starting a thread. I didn't read the entire message but it does seem a bit harsh, an indictment of PCGS' integrity with a subtle suggestion that it is intentional and PCGS is deflating the value of the coin market. to that end, I see it as a little more than just a "shot fired across the bow" of the PCGS ship.
I don't know where the other thread is or how much discussion this received. I view it as a declaration of some type and a subtle attempt to sway collectors/submitters/buyers away from PCGS. based on what I have seen during the past 16 years I don't expect that to succeed but I do expect negative fallout for NGC.
what is the sense of doing this and is it being discussed at SleepyHollow??
PCGS put out a PR last week that showed the top 20 highest price coins that sold last year where all graded by PCGS. That's domination. PCGS changed their Modern marketing last year and now does as many Modern coins as NGC. PCGS signed the deal with the Chinese Mint last summer and has just started to crank out hundreds of thousands of coins. That's world domination.
I can't comment on the technical or historical aspects that many of you have done so well on. But from an investor standpoint I would guess that NGC may be near insolvency. The Vintage coins all go to PCGS and Vintage is where all the high margins are. Modern is now 50/50 and this is a low margin bulk business. Chinese coins are going to PCGS in bulk. CLCT just took out a $10M loan to keep the pressure on. I have no dog in this fight at the moment but it looks like a price war is occurring and NGC is losing out big time.
No corporate head does anything on his own without being encouraged to do so by other business managers; with the high success rate with cac at gem and above with both P and N I don't see the big issue. Maybe Salzberg is taking cac on as well.
can someone please link the SleepyHollow discussion thread?? thanks.
@keets
Link to SleepyHollow boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=9758966#Post9758966
I'm breaking out the popcorn reading Mark's diatribe.
As a small time, rookie collector, I don't have much skin in the top pop issues raised. Even lower down the food chain, my collection is not significant enough to fret over how grade inflation impacts its value.
"Got a flaming heart, can't get my fill"
This was 50 on Sunday. Someone is doing a bunch of crack outs with MS65's and MS66's and then sending back in the inserts. These numbers go up and down all the time. (MS64's do not change much)
OK, so his graphs indicate that increased supply causes a drop in prices. That's Economics 101.
What his article does not prove is whether or not PCGS is accurately grading those MS-66+ coins. If they do, and there just happens to be more of them (because more people submit coins for grading, or whatever reason), then what's his point?
To prove gradeflation it's not enough to show that more coins have been assigned a certain grade, you need to show that the grade isn't justified. His article doesn't even attempt to make such a claim.
boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=9758966&nt=4&fpart=1
A strange letter. I would be more impressed with tougher grading standards that showed up in the slabs. The guy should put his money where his mouth is, buy the coins and put them in a NGC slab with the correct top pop grade and drive the price back where it belongs. If the coin deserves the grade/price then it should be no trouble to reverse the trend and make a decent profit doing it.
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown
How many times....has THE SAME COIN BEEN RESUBMITTED????
Exactly right. I helped put together the Moser Collection (#1 Morgan set @ NGC), and it seemed (sorry no empirical evidence), that getting those PCGS top/pop[ers] into NGC plastic was pretty much impossible.
I agree it is the registry. They changed the rules to no longer allow PCGS graded coins in their sets. They recently had a "sweet" crossover offer for any PCGS coins you had in one of your NGC sets. I suspect this email is to try and justify the need to cross the coin beyond just the registry.
Wow. He's even being taken to task on the NGC forum.
to simple and undermining?
I was surprised at the email and did not read it.
I read it. An opinion by an expert.
This thread summarizes my thoughts on the issue
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/974792/if-a-coin-could-talk#latest
In a nutshell: NGC has consistently graded the coin higher than PCGS but PCGS is slowly catching up. In essence "we are looser but we're more consistent in that looseness over time than they are". Lol
What a stunner! I like your 67 better.
Don't forget to include me in your generous giveaway!
My YouTube Channel
I'll just leave this here:
ebay.com/itm/1829-Capped-Bust-Half-Dime-NGC-AU-55-Gorgeous-and-original-/152400835550?hash=item237bcc33de:g:~6MAAOSw-0xYfvRE
Guess the next question is:
Does this represent a new era of direct, potentially hostile, competition between the "Big Two"? Or does PCGS just let it run off their back, and we go back to the previous status of peaceful coexistence? (At least, that's how it looked in my little corner of the numismatic world).
Either way, it may not mean much to those of us puttering along with our little collections...but it COULD:
I kind of assume that the principles of the two companies know each other fairly well. It's not like they can AVOID each other. I guess we might find out how what kind of relationship it is.
You assume this to be the first volley. The first (or most significant first volley) was PCGS cutting it's bulk Modern pricing at the start of 2016. That ate into NGC's dominant Modern segment. Prior to last year, NGC had 70% of the Modern market, PCGS had 70% of the Vintage market. PCGS has kept its Vintage lead and is now doing 50/50 in Moderns. This is the time of year when corporations know last years numbers. The Board of NGC was probably briefed in the last few days and scolded Salzberg for losing market share, and most likely have declining revenue and profits. So now he tries to create FUD.
I was at the NGC Luncheon at FUN 11 days ago; Mark S. was the speaker. He did touch on the topic of no longer accepting PCGS coins for Registry sets, but made no inference of the contents of the article. I've met Mark several times; he's a very intelligent personable guy with a low ego. I'm a bit surprised to see him throw this out there in such a public fashion, but he's certainly entitled to voice his opinion.
Most of us have acknowledged that there's grade inflation going on at PCGS; many of us have purchased coins in older PCGS slabs and cracked them out hoping for an upgrade. I find his article very informative and eye opening, but it doesn't disuede me from submitting coins to PCGS. I use both NGC and PCGS to grade my coins and believe they not interchangable but both provide a high quality service.
I believe PCGS started to realize themselves that grades were inflating a bit. Recent submissions seem to be more conservative than what I would expect a few years ago. I'm all for the two companies competing and keeping each other in check.
I for one am glad Mark opened up this can of worms. I think it is very important that HE address overgrading in the marketplace. Since he is willing to talk about it openly, lets have an open discussion.
There are flaws in some of his charts:
1) there were two rolls of 1912-S nickels that got graded by PCGS. This disqualifies that as an argument on overgrading. A bit of reserach would have done that easily. Recently there was a roll of 1911-D Lincolns as well.
2) Many of the modern issue populations are likely skewed by a change in the bulk submission program at PCGS, not a general overgrading scheme. These are submission taken away from NGC.
To properly see if there is overgrading, look at the actual coins. I saw how overgrading hurt the market for AU 1877 Indian cents. I documented it in the following article:
It's hard to know how accurate the pops are if certs from crackouts aren't being returned or are taking months to get removed from the pop data. It would seem a dumb move on the part of a crackout artist to seek an upgrade, but let the value of any upgrade be diminished by increasing the population.
OTOH with good pics, PCGS should be able to ascertain which coins are being resubmitted and remove the previous version from the pops.
There is one point that I want to bring up.
There are more and more coin being sent in to be graded in the 1900's.
Not just crack outs and regraded.
Point in case in a form of a question, How many 1995W silver eagles have not been graded?
I thought the SecurePlus "fingerprint" was supposed to do that
I like what Rick Snow said.
TD
I wonder if PCGS or NGC do "market analysis" by taking what they deem their properly graded coins and submitting them to the other service??
You need to find the old soft cover books as I don't think it's available anywhere on line. I can give you a quick synopsis of what I found various times up to approx 2003-2004. I reviewed pops across the entire silver, nickel, and copper type coin spectrums of 1816-1930 looking for things that stood out at me. In particular I was looking for NGC coins in grades of MS/PF 65 or higher that had much lower pops than PCGS pops, suggesting that NGC was probably grading such coins a lot stricter....and were raving buys at the usual 5-15% NGC discount.
Looking at everything from half cents to seated/trade dollars, I really expected to find a number of under-priced items. I found a single coin in a single grade....in reality, a hen's tooth. NGC MS66 trade dollars were graded considerably less often than PCGS MS66 trade dollars. Interesting that in grades of 63-65 this didn't apply. And I couldn't find a nice NGC MS66 trade dollar to buy anyways. A fruitless search. And as I mentioned earlier in the thread, a lot of high grade PCGS coins had much lower pops than NGC. MS65 capped bust halves were 4X more populous at NGC....a fact hard to ignore....considering both graded about the same number of MS bust halves. And what I visually saw in the market place during 2002-2006 supported those findings.
Probably most of them, but for one reason or another many won't be or aren't worth it.
When I read a thread like this, it makes me wish I had more time and some extra money to do the following...
Take a random sampling of coins across several different series and grades (nothing esoteric, mainstream 'generic' stuff) and submit them all RAW to PCGS on an economy order...send to CAC...note results. Crack coins carefully, submit all RAW to NGC on an economy order...send to CAC...note results.
Repeat above two more times.
In the end, you'd have 3 grading events at each service along with a CAC review for each grading event for each service.
I'm not going to hypothesize on what the results of something like this might be, but I will say, I think it would be interesting.
May not be the best tool if there aren't any detectable surface differences between 2 nearly identical coins. I would think that pics would be faster and show any stains, spots, toning, etc. that wouldn't show in a SP scan. SP is like a relief map of a coin.
Then again you have to think that the graders will recognize most of the coins. Let's say that there are 15 1913 Liberty Widgets graded ms66 by PCGS. If you laid all 15 side by side and covered the labels, there are probably Liberty Widget collects who could identify and discuss each one of them. So no doubt the graders recognize and probably remember each one.
The SecurePlus "fingerprint" COULD do that. I remember feeling excited when PCGS first came out with this, demonstrating the technology to objectively and routinely ID individual coins. I was hoping that eventually PCGS would fingerprint ALL submissions, but I do understand that the financial reward and incentive for them at this point is not there.
Too bad. This potentially could help with doctoring and counterfeiting, but also could help mightily with provenance, stabilizing grading standards and rendering pop figures more accurate.
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
Well, the guy knows more than I ever will so his opinion should matter. I think this is a direct result of submitting the same coin over and over and over again in hopes that one day it will upgrade. That's fine if the previous slab labels are also removed from the consensus, but we know they seldom are.
Trusting population reports is like playing craps. What's laughable is that once a coin upgrades THEN all the previous lables can be provided to PCGS to adjust the populations and the price goes up afterwards.
Easy game.
Moral to the story, don't believe population reports.
I'll bet the PCGS marketing department will say the high end pop increases are because "the best coins always end up in PCGS holders"
Most likely the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Obviously he didn't bother to read or chose to totally ignore the 20 pages and 190+ postings on his own site's message board which were mostly critical of his move to exclude PCGS coins from his registry. It just goes to prove he had no intention of listening to any of his customer's or former customer's points of view despite his claims to the contrary.
Mr. Salzberg's company faces to two fundamental problems.
First, his company's grading standards are generally lower than those of PCGS. Although there have been a decent number of fairly graded and conservatively graded NGC coins that have entered market, by in large his company's standards have been lower for a long time. This dates back twenty years to the time when NGC bids on the "blind bid" Blue Sheet dipped below PCGS. The situation on the sign-seen market has followed accordingly.
Second, many of the NGC coins that were properly graded have been crossed over to PCGS. That makes the remaining population of NGC coins look worse. Most of the mistakes that NGC has made, stay in NGC holders. What is too often left are over graded, scrubbed-up pieces that only sell for steep discounts to those who know how to grade.
Mr. Salzberg can pontificate all he wants about how his competition's standards have slipped, but he'd best take a look at what's out on the bourse floor. It's not pretty.
I have a want list up on the Heritage site. Every time I see an NGC graded coin show up as a possibility to fill it, I almost groan because usually the piece is not going to make the grade.
I am sorry to have to say this because I would like to see real competition in the coin grading industry. Real competition keeps the competing companies on their toes, but sadly NGC is not providing it. This latest move has only isolated his company more from the serious hobbyists who could give Mr. Salzberg constructive suggestions. Sadly he doesn't want to listen. Instead he writes delusional missives like this one. Instead of competing with PCGS, he might soon have to worry about outdistancing ICG.