PCGS Coin Sniffer questions
tmot99
Posts: 5,238 ✭✭✭
I don't know if anybody on here can answer these questions other than PCGS bosses, but here are a couple of mine. Please post yours!
1) Everything smells. Does PCGS have a list of acceptable smells versus not acceptable smells? A bogus example would be if I was eating an apple while holding a coin. I might get apple juice on the coin. Does it get bagged for a smell that can be detected in their coin sniffer? A real life example is an old large cent. I follow normally accepted practices and brush my large cent collection with Blue Ribbon or some other acceptable oil-based chemical. Is this an automatic bodybag?
2) If the Coin Sniffer can detect so much stuff and qualify it as this or that, why can't it determine what the chemical is in milk spots on silver eagles? Or at least if milk spots will develop over time (assuming there is some chemical reaction with something on the surface)?
What questions do you have? Anybody have answers?
1) Everything smells. Does PCGS have a list of acceptable smells versus not acceptable smells? A bogus example would be if I was eating an apple while holding a coin. I might get apple juice on the coin. Does it get bagged for a smell that can be detected in their coin sniffer? A real life example is an old large cent. I follow normally accepted practices and brush my large cent collection with Blue Ribbon or some other acceptable oil-based chemical. Is this an automatic bodybag?
2) If the Coin Sniffer can detect so much stuff and qualify it as this or that, why can't it determine what the chemical is in milk spots on silver eagles? Or at least if milk spots will develop over time (assuming there is some chemical reaction with something on the surface)?
What questions do you have? Anybody have answers?
0
Comments
Sort of like the Treasury Dept. can't talk a whole lot about what they do to protect against counterfeiting.
My guess is that they only detect very specific things, like the presence of putty, etc. They probably picked off the most often used techniques and went after those.
<< <i>I don't know if anybody on here can answer these questions other than PCGS bosses, but here are a couple of mine. Please post yours!
1) Everything smells. Does PCGS have a list of acceptable smells versus not acceptable smells? A bogus example would be if I was eating an apple while holding a coin. I might get apple juice on the coin. Does it get bagged for a smell that can be detected in their coin sniffer? A real life example is an old large cent. I follow normally accepted practices and brush my large cent collection with Blue Ribbon or some other acceptable oil-based chemical. Is this an automatic bodybag?
2) If the Coin Sniffer can detect so much stuff and qualify it as this or that, why can't it determine what the chemical is in milk spots on silver eagles? Or at least if milk spots will develop over time (assuming there is some chemical reaction with something on the surface)?
What questions do you have? Anybody have answers? >>
I do not know what the "sniffer" technology entails, but most likely it will be based on light reflection, refraction technology rather than chemical analysis.
TRUTH
the TPG's could a aromatic solvent cross contaminate your other coins in that sealed package? Even storage issues could come into question. I don't know about you but I store a lot coins in 2x2's
in a whitman box so could a couple of bad apples spoil the whole batch? These guys are a lot smarter than I am and so I think
they have to employ tolerances in there equation to minimize
the risk of cross contamination.
<< <i>I think I read somewhere that it can detect if nose grease has been applied. How is this going to be diagnosed differently than Blue Ribbon or other "acceptable" oils? A fingerprint can be quite oily. Does that automatically disqualify it from grading? >>
Different things show up under different light. If you pass a puttied coin under ultraviolet light, you will see the difference in texture more pronounced than if you use an incandescent light. Once the coin is scanned under the new lightsource, computer software is able to enhance the differences in texture. Coin collectors and dealers who know what to look for are good at spotting this difference in texture without special lighting. Once this coin is in the database, I would assume the "signature" of the coin will be identified.
TRUTH