PCGS Policy Change Reinforces Conjecture About Abandonment of support for Registry Digital Album
ProofCollection
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@PCGS_Hy
TLDR: PCGS no longer offers in-slab Trueviews.
Some of you know that until recently, we were able to submit coins for in-slab Trueview photography services for $5/coin. Instructions were provided and I did this successfully in late 2022 for a bunch of coins. Since then I've acquired lots of coins in legacy holders and with the PCGS show in town I decided to drop off a submission to completely fulfill my Digital Album for slots where the coins are in old holders. I followed the same instructions I did in 2022. No one at the PCGS submission desk at the show warned me that I would not get TVs when I gave them my submission. A few weeks later I get the results and I get a screen full of these slabviews:
They don't even bother to orient the Rattler coins properly!
Not only am I outraged that they did not provide the service I requested (Trueview, not Slabview) following the same directions I was given and had used on a previous successful submission, but no one at PCGS had the courtesy to tell me that I wasn't going to get what I was ordering. Not only that, these Slabviews are just awful and lack sufficient resolution and clarity to be of any value other than visual recognition and matching.
I escalated this issue through customer service and was provided with this response:
Due to recent technological upgrades, we can no longer provide TrueView images for coins while they remain in their current holders. To assist you, we have two options: we can image the coins within their existing holders as provided, or we can remove the coins to capture high quality TrueView images before placing them in new PCGS holders.
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Given your goal of adding these to your Set Registry account, I recommend the latter. Since you have already covered the initial imaging and shipping costs, we would like to provide a complimentary FedEx return label and waive all imaging and shipping fees for the reholding service to ensure you receive the images you need.
This is problematic because in many cases, the old holders add extra value and some of the coins have CAC (or other) stickers that make reholdering any of the coins for the purpose of a photo a non-starter. This "technological limitation" sticks yet another fork into the demise of the PCGS Registry program. The digital album feature works only with Trueviews. I won't get into the fact that the digital album feature doesn't fully work but at least I was optimistic that they would someday get that figured out.
I have to wonder what kind of "upgrade" prohibits them from taking the same kinds of pictures that all of the auction houses take? I guess this "upgrade" is why all of the Trueviews now are inferior to the "Phil-era" photos.
To their credit, they are offering a free re-holder to make it right but of the coins I submitted half are in OGHs and Rattlers which I will not destroy. Of the other half mostly in light blue labelled holders, at least half of those CAC stickered which means I would incur additional shipping and re-stickering expense which I probably will not do. This is really, really disappointing and I must now abandon my aspiration to have my whole collection digitally visible and shareable and one less reason to remain loyal to PCGS. 
I don't think they realize what a hit this is to the program. PCGS has too much legacy product in the field and collectors should not be expected to incur the expense and downsides of reholdering old slabs or limiting their purchases accordingly. PCGS forcing collectors of PCGS-holdered coins to incur a full reholder to make use of their promoted registry and digital album features is a real slap in the face.
Comments
You can upload your own photos to the digital registry albums without needing a true view. I've done it many times, works just fine.
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I think you are misreading what they are offering you. They are simply offering you a free FedEx label to return the coins and will waive additional imaging and reshipping fees for the reholdering of the coins. They are NOT offering you free reholdering services at all. Maybe I am misreading it, but it sure seems black and white to me.
Agree with @humanssuck that you can, or at least you could previously, load up your own images into your sets. I have done it for years.
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
Yes, I guess I am aware of this but last time I tried it, not only was it tedious and didn't work very well but my pictures are terrible. Even though TVs are generally not as good as they once were, they are better than what I can produce.
Yes, I see you are correct.
I guess an additional point I didn't make is that normally the $5 imaging fee plus shipping both ways (unless you can drop off at a show) is a decent amount to pay just for photographs. Increasing this to $25/coin is prohibitive for most collections and collectors.
there are forumites who do pro photos but i'll guess it's more than $5
I neglected to discuss the other undeniable benefit of Trueviews which is the photos are forever linked to the cert number which cannot be done with private photos.
I challenge the "undeniable benefit" derived from consistently subpar photos.
"She comes out of the sun in a silk dress,
running like a water color in the rain...."
I'm sure other people do the same, but the undeniable benefit is that when I'm buying coins, when sellers have really crappy photos (and most still do, including many coin dealers), usually even the worst Trueview photos let me see what I need to in order to make buying decisions.
I understand and that you are okay with subpar photos along with including them into your registry. I choose the opposite by having superb photos, mostly taken by @robec to accurately show my coins in my registry sets. We have different priorities obviously.
"She comes out of the sun in a silk dress,
running like a water color in the rain...."
Lest I be misunderstood, I do prefer high quality photos. But having a photo pop up when you verify a cert has value to me. If you could take your robec photos and attach them to the cert somehow, that would be the ultimate, but it will never happen.
The technological upgrades I imagine are related to automation and assembly-line like throughput. Coins in slabs take longer to shoot because of the lighting challenges. Perhaps they also have better image mask generation for cropping out coins from their background, but it fails with slabs.
Regarding putting your own picture in digital albums, I do this exclusively. There is one problem I've experienced with this, and it's not new. If you use your own pictures, they're downsized when they're uploaded, presumably and understandably to keep people from uploading a thousand 25 MP images and chewing through their storage and network bandwidth. The downsizing does seem a bit aggressive, however, and results in blurry images in the album.
The other album issue I've had is with the display of coins not having a diameter in PCGS's database. This has often been resolved by my sending them a list of these coins, although not the last time I did it. This is typically a problem with pre-19th century world coins and is messing up my Prime Number Set album.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
It could be, but those doing photos haven't set up the infrastructure to do that. If they did, it would open up a different, but interesting can of worms related to the best way to do that. For starters, not everyone that has their coins photographed wants the world to see the picture or the slab it is/was in.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
I would assume the same thing; however, for PCGS not to maintain the same capability that they once had and every auction house has is IMO, inexcusable. There's no reason not to keep one slab-capable coin studio open and available to support their customer base for legacy product. Presumably it would require no additional equipment (unless they got rid of all of their old stuff or re-used it, all you need is some space. I would even suggest they have an obligation.
Just curious: What is your opinion on the quality of the thru-the-slab photos that GreatCollections takes for its auctions versus the thru-the-slab photos that PCGS produces?
It might not be a valid comparison because I believe Phil was still there the last time I had PCGS take in-slab TVs and they were great. I thought they were on par with GC, but then maybe that's because Phil is now at GC.
The reason is cost. If photos have moved to low-skill assembly line photos, you'd have to have someone with a comparatively high level of skill to do slab shots, assuming you wanted them to be better than Heritage's (not saying Heritage's are bad, just that they're one standard for mass-produced, consistent slab shots). They'll have to be paid more, probably work more slowly than the others, and would probably not be profitable. I imagine any analysis into the effects of long-term customer satisfaction saw that only a small piece of their customer base is being affected.
From our point of view, that might not be a good excuse, but it's a likely explanation.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
And how much are you willing to pay for photos? Will you pay extra?
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Apples and oranges. GC doesn't image raw coins so they only need one set up.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Sure. I guess my point is that when you run one of the premier coin grading services on the planet, there are certain expectations, one of which is top quality photography, support for legacy product, and support for registry set and registry-set related functionality. Whatever the cost is, figure it out and including it in your pricing.
The current price of $5 has been the price for a long time and I wouldn't be surprised to see it go up. No one wants to pay more but I would suggest that a price as high as $10 would be feasible (if the pictures were of the quality circa 5 years ago) and a great option to the other alternative. The cost of $25 for a new holder + lose your legacy plastic + lose any value-added stickers is untenable.
What is the problem with having multiple setups? Why are companies just limited to one if the work flow requires more?
Cost. If I have a set up that gets used 10x per year, are you willing to pay $100 or $1000 for me to use it? You're assuming (incorrectly) that there is zero cost associated with maintaining the set ups.
While I have you here, I also see no reason why "support for legacy products" requires them to allow in slab photography. This assumes that a TV image is mandatory to the product. Some of their new product doesn't have TV images.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
They already have (or had) the setup so the cost is effectively zero. The only real cost is the space it takes up which shouldn't be a big deal for a large top tier grading company. As long as the setup gets used regularly, that's all that matters. Maintenance for cameras and light bulbs should be minimal, as well as the janitorial needs of the space. We can only speculate how often the setup would be used. If I'm the only customer asking for this then perhaps it is not needed.
I agree that it's not mandatory, but you can't deny that the message PCGS has or wants to have is: Please have your coins graded by us, build PCGS-exclusive sets by having us grade your raw coins or buying them in the secondary market, and use our registry and related services to do it. One way you help collectors do this is to support the value and appeal of the legacy product but providing means to make it just as viable as the modern product. What you don't say is, sorry you bought a coin in an old holder, we don't really support those anymore. Even though we used to be able to photograph coins just like the auction services do, the only thing we're willing to do for you and your coins in old holders is a shitty slabview or you can pay us even more and forfeit the "old holder" value and charm and stickers for a proper photo.
Perhaps they did figure it into pricing and decided they didn't want the fees to be that high, so they then figured it back out.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
I think I do OK photos for my coins, so I'll just live with those if the True Views are below par. It can be done with enough practice.
10-4,
My Instagram picturesErik
My registry sets
@ProofCollection you're not the only collector who wants pictures of their coins taken without removing the coins from the slabs. I have been waiting a couple of years for the TrueViews to improve before I sent them my cons. Now I guess that wait was in vain.