Since there appears to be change of management at PCGS maybe there can be a change of policy here to
trueblood
Posts: 609 ✭✭✭✭
I believe Everyone knows that this site isn't what it once was, at least everybody I speak to tells me such. So why can we attempt to list what needs to be done here to correct past mistakes by PCGS' old mgmt, and make this the best coin site there is and kick NGC's arse while we are at it 
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OK I will start, I love PCGS but I would love them more if I could contact/talk to someone KNOWLEDGABLE there who is able to correct the situation before the coin is shipped back to me.
With re to the website, sometimes I have to log in 3-5x before I can get on, maybe its on my end but I don't have that problem anywhere else.
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Poof
100% positive transactions with SurfinxHI, bigole, 1madman, collectorcoins, proofmorgan, Luke Marshall, silver pop, golden egg, point five zero,coin22lover, alohagary, blaircountycoin,joebb21
Maybe ... maybe not.
Hey newbie, that’s a bold statement! 😉🤔🤓 To be fair, change is inevitable. The forum is what we make it. I’m a longtime satisfied customer. But that doesn’t mean you can’t throw out a respectful suggestion should you desire…….fire away.
You first.
10-4,
My Instagram picturesErik
My registry sets
Here’s a suggestion. There’s a lot of I’m smarter than you and “go away “ with your questions we don’t deem worthy. Whole lot of pompous responses and why are you bothering us with stupid questions. Nit picking and one upping. You want to change the ways this forum operates? Perhaps start within .This forum is the people participating in it. Change starts with those people and how they chose to interact with each other. Same site different opinions. Finally pointing out the problems is maybe helping creating solutions is truly helpful
🎶 shout shout, let it all out 🎶
There is no upside to PCGS in letting this forum function as the wild, wild west.
You can discuss just about anything coin related that you wish. It's when the "coin related" becomes libelous against a corporate entity or the topics become unrelated to coins that action is taken. That is NOT going to change for obvious reasons. [If not obvious, I will explain. ]
What has lowered the level of discussions a bit is the absence of people like Skip and Roger. I don't know if an amnesty is in order. But that is different than changing the rules.
Just a WAG but I think the focus might be identification of new markets for encapsulation. And how to generate revenue.
I've seen Indian arrowheads sell for hundreds of thousands. 1960's skateboards for ten thousand. Rock concert t-shirt, thousands. There are so many types of collectibles that can be authenticated, graded and marketed that it boggles my mind.
eBay should have had the foresight to do this to clean up their site. They screwed up.
For PCGS, CUSTOMER SERVICE is expensive. Be happy it's not offshored or totally AI.
Overall the boards are better now with some moderation than in the free for all of the old days. I remember some of those inflamed topics that got D Hall throwing the ban hammer at so many people.
Even so, a lot of the charm in the old days wasn’t the loose moderation - it was the cast of characters. Many were kind or found a fun way to share stuff. It was fun even if I wasn’t controversial enough to be in more than one coinalot tale, lol.
Like coins, attrition changes the face and makeup. At the core, a seed.
We all do well to take root. Unfortunately we're often unable to exercise our right to free speech, without having protocols that remove the whole plant.
Lots of cool guys have passed on. Lots of good people left here without a goodbye.
I'm just taking David Hall's advice.
Having fun with coins and going long on gold.
@trueblood "Everyone knows that this site isn't what it once was"
.
.
“I've seen Indian arrowheads sell for hundreds of thousands. 1960's skateboards for ten thousand. Rock concert t-shirt, thousands. There are so many types of collectibles that can be authenticated, graded and marketed that it boggles my mind.”
Yep. They’ll be slabbing every conceivable collectible object that doesn’t move.
Just please slab Thai bullet money before going too far afield.
As a wise (in my opinion) man once said: "be the change you wish to see". I'm in this hobby for the fun and so I try to keep it that way.
eBay never sees the items that are sold through their site. How could they authenticate them?
I've been a forum member for 6 years. Before that I was a lurker for 3 years. As long as I've been here there has always been a reoccurring theme that things were so much better in the past. I don't get it. Seems pretty much the same. But......what do I know?
New management probably still hasn’t found their parking spaces, yet I think you will have managed to anger them already.
"Nostalgia - a deeply-felt longing for reconnection to a past that never occurred." - Oscar Wilde
edited to add: My memories of the disagree button are poignant
True. And eBay has embraces authentication to help their site. You had the $5 NGC opinion on raw coins. You are no longer allowed to post grades for raw coins. Etc.
Some of it is missing individuals, I think.
Some of it is just nostalgia which is always a little bit of misremembering as @ColonelJessup has suggested.
CU is going scalar.
Coins are a mature growth niche which will represent at most 5% of CU revenue stream five years from now (or heads are going to roll).
If I were the CEO of CU, I would be much more focused on new product development and how production flows can be be handled in the main for those markets much more effective in boosting revenue. Private enterprise will create much more crap for the unwashed masses to consume than the US Mint (or likely we) could ever imagine.
Some days it really sucks to be a numismatist
I was on the forum back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Nothing I’ve seen in my recent return rivals some of the utter nonsense that went on back then. I think the moderators have found a good balance in letting discussions go forward, sometimes two steps backward, among people with widely different perspectives on the hobby, short of profanity and threats, allowing some sarcasm and jabs.
I’d like to see more technology brought into the grading process. It’s often said grading is a combination of science and art. I’d like to see more science involved in the grading process. The failed attempts 20 years ago shouldn’t mean that effort should be tossed aside forever.
Bring it back. Long live the disagree button.
Not an AI expert by current standards, but coin grading is not "AI-prone" for much collector coinage. The algorithm for 81-S dollars is not the same as that needed for the 83-O. The software to calculate grade based on the algorithm is secondary to the accumulation of data about textures, strike tendencies, etc. that must be derived and loaded. Never ever going to happen done close enough to "right" Not enough object capture events available to build the necessarily-nuanced libraries for self-teaching.
Computer grading of ASE's and AGE's was doable twenty years ago. Scanning capabilities are far beyond what's required.
What would AI grade an uncirculated major error coin. Not doable, IMO.
I sent Heather a message with the same question a month ago, but have not as yet had an answer. No Collector nor Seller would want to have a forum which became a screaming match every day. At least that would be my opinion. We all wish to learn and share coin related experiences and purchases. I would hope that great past contributors who had violated a policy and suffered the ultimate banishment could be reinstated for the benefit of us all, PCGS included.
Maybe.
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.....Mark Twain
I’m not an AI expert but if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard it can’t be done I be the owner of a 1804 Silver Dollar. We’re approaching the point of facial recognition of billions of people. We can jam billions of transistors in a 2”x2” microprocessor. We have SMT assembly equipment that has the programming and capacity to accurately place over 50,000 components the size is a grain of pepper in an hour. If the human eye can make the distinction there is optics and software that can match or exceed it. PCGS seriously looked at computer grading in the 1990’s. I’m not sure what happened that caused it not to materialize (capability or marketability) but a heck of a lot has happened technology wise in the last 30 years.
eBay should have bought one of the grading services and expanded it(like what is about to happen now) when those services could have been bought for a song.
eBay business model coulda, woulda, shoulda,
1. New ( Amazon took that market)
2. Certified collectibles
3. Junk flea market stuff for all the other(maybe in a spin-off company) You CAN'T list just anything on Amazon because it taints their biz model.
I have a feeling the new PCGS will develop a selling site for their certified collectibles. So long eBay.
The world passed eBay by.
Gee that will be swell. Guaranteed certified all you want. Problem is eBay offers the opportunity to cherry pick. Bargain hunt.take a chance. TPG makes there own eBay and there goes a very large chunk of the reason for eBay
🎶 shout shout, let it all out 🎶
Right now...
US Coins- 1,100,459 Results, Uncertified- 782,344 Results
World Coins- 1,028,553 Results, Uncertified- 883,919 Results
Yeah, they're toast.
How does AI determine messed with surfaces, NT vs. AT? Burnishing with a cloth? Hairlines from cleaning vs hairlines from acceptable causes? Eye appeal? And on and on..........
In theory, AI could learn to do all of those things, probably as well a a human, except maybe eye appeal which is subjective. On the other hand if you could determine the components of eye appeal: luster combined with color deducted for distractions, you might be able to create a more objective determination of eye appeal.
Long ago there was an "open forum" here. Hopefully it will not come back.
You guys talk like AI wouldn’t be consistent like humans are.
If the human eye can do it, given the quality of optics used in PCB populating that I'm familiar with, it could be "taught" to a computer to identify any observable discrepancies that indicate a coin has been messed with. These optics examine very small electronic components, correctly orient them and direct how to place them all at blinding speed. Some of these components are smaller than a grain of pepper. In fact the first shipment of samples we received were in a small zip lock bag. The individual receiving them looked at the bag, thought it was empty and was about to contact the manufacturer to tell them they sent an empty bag. You had to hold the bag up to a light and even then could barely see there was something in the bag. This was over ten years ago so I have to imagine there have been further improvements of this technology.
you seem nice, thanks for sharing, let us know what your new handle is somehow
seriously, we need the "disagree" emoji. In my simple mind there was nothing wrong with that option.
Wait a second here.... I can't go down to the local store and get a plastic bag to carry my groceries back home but they are going to encase just about everything else in plastic, oh go figure
Charles III Album
Charles III Portrait Set
Charles IV Album
Charles IV Portrait Set
Spanish Colonial Pillar Set
I want to see the skateboard slab. No- really, I do.
I just read an article ATS published today: We will no longer give grade results over the phone.
I can't help but wonder if the outdated use of telephone conversations for customer service is on the chopping block at PCGS.
Skip AI and hire Robbie the Robot
Maybe they will toe the middle line politically!
The OP was banned for being an alt of a banned account, not for the topic of the post. We always welcome feedback and discussion on how we can improve.
When it comes to banned members, I understand that it may be hard to see why they were banned and why the ban remains. We often delete offending posts or comments or deal with things behind the scenes (such as pms) that other users don’t see.
Thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts and for being active members of our community.
Heather Boyd
PCGS Senior Director of Marketing
How many foci are needed for facial recognition? Did you look at the Compugrade scan protocol? No matter.
From time immemorial (or at least post WWII), grading has part of the adventure. My generation (Daltry stuttering in the background) had an opportunity in the 80's unlike any other. If you were a devoted auction geek or a major bourse-table presence, the sheer volume of truly rare and often wonderful coins was augmented by acres and acres of very choice type and cascades of gold. .
Never again will those 50-75 million coins already graded be available for reference.
Call me a romantic, but I'd rather trust my sense of eye-appeal for plus/minus 0.2 grading points than I would a computer-derived valuation. The subjective nature of your own or anyone else's particular "yummy factor" is beyond calculation. Otherwise, calculably graded coin ETFs would be quite suitable as a meme stock for RobinHood
Never hurts to ask but I guess getting a reset on my warnings is out of the question.
P.S. No changes needed…
Consider my putative 50-75 millions coins graded by the two majors. Thirty five years and three major market cycles of rinse-and-repeat. Quibble about fragmentary exceptions, but the entire output of the last 35 years is unavailable to be learned from.
If you are discussing ASEs and AGEs, as I said before, those are not as precisely engineered as aircraft engine parts.
Scan-derived 3-D CAD-CAM maps can be constructed by lasers with the engineering specs as a baseline.
In full agreement that those items might be done via AI. Scalar efficiencies can be derived. The gold-plated bottle-caps will be placed in the slabs by some robots and sealed by others. The shipping terminal will be staffed by an old man and a dog. The old man to bang on equipment with a wrench if it jams up, and the dog to bark and wake him when it happens.
I don't know why an internet marketplace needs to be an authenticator as well. It's a different business.
I guess Heritage, Stacks, legends and great collections also were passed by because they just SELL certified coins instead of certifying them themselves.
And why aren't we taking PCGS to task for not being an online auction company? In fact, if a company both sells and certifies, why would we trust them? They are no longer a "3rd party".
Trueblood was realone aka afford for the 3 people who didn’t know
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
I don't know the answer to the first question and no to the second but whatever the protocol was 20 years ago probably doesn't have a lot of bearing on the capabilites today given advances in technology and software since then (you remember the Macintosh and floppy drive). That said this might give an indication of where the technology is compared to human eyesight...
"The GaussianFace algorithm developed in 2014 by researchers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong achieved facial identification scores of 98.52% compared with the 97.53% achieved by humans. An excellent rating, despite weaknesses regarding memory capacity required and calculation times."
Keep in mind that this was almost ten years ago and I'd imagine that this capability has improved significantly since then while not much improvement in human grading performance has occurred.
Regarding the 50~75 million coins, you don't need 50 or 75 million as a reference. What you would start with are the best examples of the coins available and use that as the benchmark. Humans would be involved in establishing algorithms for features we subjectively consider attractive. Of course the programs will be consistent in determining attractiveness while humans will tend to vary. The buyer will be the final arbiter on what the find attractive.
Well, Heritage had their finger in the pie at NGC, IIRC.
Didn't seem to bother people.
I'm not clear but didn't Heritage also have an interest in CDN? Some people might have been a little leery despite the proclamation of independence.
My thought was that CU was a natural fit to run NGC and CU products (and possibly others) on a collectible auction service. There's going to be an explosion of authenticated and encapsulated product categories in the next few years. CU & NGC et al, products, if they were separated out from eBay by a newly formed auction service would possibly be a valid business model.
eBay is a jumbled mess of offerings and eBay will not fix the shoddy sellers or counterfeit listings. IMHO, people have dropped eBay because of this and other reasons. I just don't see how eBay can fix itself at this point.
I.E. the new CU buys Great Collections and expands it to gradually broaden the categories. They could give Heritage a serious challenge. The collectible market is very fragmented right now. A well run company with horsepower could position itself well and benefit buyers and sellers.
Definitely. I had a Christian Hosoi deck back in the late 80’s that I have never seen again since. If I had most of my original decks they’d be worth a small fortune.
https://moneyinc.com/most-expensive-skateboards-in-the-world/
https://www.bluecotton.com/blog/articles/coaching/the-18-most-infamous-expensive-iconic-t-shirts-of-all-time/
While it's not AI it's technology that got him again
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......