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Interesting early ANACS photo cert w/grade
Walkerguy21D
Posts: 12,108 ✭✭✭✭✭
A dealer friend of mine purchased this at Summer FUN yesterday, and I was unfamiliar with this style, so I studied it for a few moments and I took a picture. The coin definitely matches the picture, and supposedly was off the market for ~40 years, I was told.
Apparently ANACS had been doing photo certs since the early 70’s, but only started adding the grade opinion in 1979.
I thought I’d share with the forum, as the coin was quickly flipped, and likely destined for a slab and higher grade.
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Comments
Oh, oh.
C. S. Cormell wants her coin back.
I like (the flip puzzles me?)
This is not a first generation ANACS photo certificate. There is a thread on here showing all of the different generations of ANACS photo certificates going back to the time in Washington, D.C..
This style of photo certificate appeared in late 1976, after ANACS moved to Colorado Springs. When I began the grading service added to the existing authentication service on March 1, 1979, we used the same template and just added the grade to the same line that had the certificate number.
This was literally done on a typewriter filling in spaces on a printed template. When it was full, our photographer took a photograph of the entire template, sort of like a contact sheet, and cut the sheet-sized negative up into individual negatives that were matched up with the negative of the coin picture for that item, and the photo certificates were printed four at a time on photographic stock. After inspection it was cut out and embossed with a notary-type seal maker.
@CaptHenway, thanks for adding to the discussion and giving us more insight.
My point in the title was this is the first generation that included the grade.
From the OldSlabHolders.com site:
Certificate issued from Dec 1978 - Mar 1981. No grades were given initially just like Type 1 & 2 certificates. Beginning on March 1, 1979 owners could pay extra and receive it with a grade.
This example shows a grade opinion and was issued in July of 1979.
If that information is incorrect, then the website needs to be corrected…
Let me go over there and check it.
@CaptHenway
You could write the definitive book on this topic, for sure.
That's a very high value coin. I wonder what it was worth back then.
The coin looks scrubbed.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
Just thinking out loud, I wonder if this key date has XF details and ANACS, back in the 1970s would 'downgrade' the cleaning and call it VF35?
I don’t know. But that type of grading decision appears to have occurred more than occasionally since the 80’s.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
During my time there, we would determine the letter grade by the design details, but if a coin had a problem, such as cleaning we would lower it to the lowest number within the letter grade. Thus an "EF-45 Details, Cleaned" coin would be called an "EF-40, Cleaned." Of course, an "EF-40 details, Cleaned" coin would also be called an "EF-40, Cleaned."
Excellent clarification.
One slight objection:
If the above Morgan is cleaned and VF35 is the top of the VF grade, how do you account for the overall grading of this one?
OK, I stand corrected, When I started there in November of 1978 we were using the Generation 2 information template with the "In our opinion..." disclaimer in two lines. However, we Authenticators never saw the finished certificates unless somebody in the shipping department brought us a coin and a certificate and asked us something like "Is this the right coin for this certificate," and that happened seldom.
The Generation 3 certificates have the "In our opinion..." disclaimer in one line. I strongly suspect that our extremely competent Office Manager, Mary Thompson, figured out that when we eventually did start grading coins in the very near future, she would need some place to type "GRADE: EF-45/45" or whatever on the template, so she rewrote the disclaimer in one line at some time in December of 1978 and just simply started using it without bothering to tell us Authenticators.
So, that became the new normal template that was used, without any further changes, when we began issuing graded certificates on March 1, 1979. Non-graded coins (we also did a lot of foreign and ancient coins that we would not grade) used the new templates as well, which is why I thought I remembered that there had not been any changes in the template. There wasn't....in March.
The thread title should be changed to 3rd generation.
Edited; thanks again for all your insight into the early ANACS processes.
@relicsncoins has several threads on ANACS photo certificates
- Bob -
MPL's - Lincolns of Color
Central Valley Roosevelts
Fascinating. I was a kid collector in the late 70s and had no concept of a TPG. In my household the grade was assigned by me and my mother - with my dad as needed in the case of radical disagreement.
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I'm curious, Tom, how the grading held up with leading dealers then? Did Anacs face any serious trouble or legal action if they got the grading "wrong"?