Submission results are in, can anything be gleaned?

SilenceOfTheClams

I had posted in an existing thread that I had a somewhat interesting submission that could provide some info on the pulse of grading and the coins available on ebay. Results are in today.

I submitted 28 Coins:

1 coin was a crossover from NGC to PCGS at grade and stickered as it had when.

18 coins were the raw coins I had sent in to PCGS from the recent Chicago show and were graded at the end of October or early November. They included Mercury dimes, Washington quarters, Walkers, and silver commems. 15 out of 18 greenbeaned with grades ranging from MS64 to MS67. Ranked by value, the 8 highest value coins beaned with the non CACs being in the middle of the value spectrum.

The remaining 10 coins I bought because I thought they were strong for the grade. All were purchased on ebay with grades ranging from AU53 . 8 out of 10 beaned. 2 were coins that knocked my socks off. One was a CB half with amazing toning and it greenbeaned and the other was a Washington quarter that practically glowed. It got a gold bean. One of the other coins was an MS 64 gold dollar. The two that didn't bean were Walkers and literally the two lowest value coins out of the 10 I purchased already graded.

Total, 28 coins, 25 green beans, one gold.

Seems like the PCGS grading was pretty conservative. Also seems that nice unbeaned coins, including gold, can still be found on ebay, though they are fewer and farther between than they were even 3-4 years ago.

Winesteven

With a success rate like that, I award you the “Albanese Good Eye” Award, and deservedly so! Congratulations!!!!

Steve

Aercus

The most interesting part to me is that 15 of 18 freshly graded coins beaned.  Without knowing exactly the coins involved, I find this pretty high.  PCGS has become more conservative the last couple of years and this is some evidence of that.  

SilenceOfTheClams

Winesteven said:

With a success rate like that, I award you the “Albanese Good Eye” Award, and deservedly so! Congratulations!!!!

Steve

@Winesteven My typing was off. 23 beans, not 25. I appreciate the sentiment, but any success I enjoy was learned from prior CAC submissions. Specifically, when I saw the gold dollar, I remembered a conversation I had with JA about a $3 princess that didn’t pass. It centered around luster, rub, and contact marks. So I gave the coin a good look and felt it was a B coin but CAC standards so I took a shot.

Aercus said:

The most interesting part to me is that 15 of 18 freshly graded coins beaned.  Without knowing exactly the coins involved, I find this pretty high.  PCGS has become more conservative the last couple of years and this is some evidence of that.  

@Aercus I felt this was the most interesting outcome. It was a good test since the quality filter was strictly PCGSs. The coins were two Mercs, 6 Washington, 6 WLHs, 3 Morgans, 1 Commem. Values ranged from $30 to $500. Obviously the low value coins didn’t make economic sense to submit but it is also interesting that the non CACs were in the bottom half of value ranges.

On a submission a few years back, I had purchased 4 quarter/half eagles in rattlers as a group from eBay. Got them and they had haze and possibly putty so I cracked them out and hit them with acetone and sent to PCGS. They all came back a point or 2 higher. So I sent them in to CAC and I think 2 stickered. So I wonder if others had info on recently graded coin’s success rate?

WilliamJ

Thanks for sharing the results. I find it educational. Good success rate.

Wabbit

Nice results. What I read from this is you got the shaft bigtime on your grades! Just like I did last time.

Crypto

I truly believe PCGS has tightened up recently and one can guess that the market pressure from cac played a part. 

WilliamJ

Crypto said:

I truly believe PCGS has tightened up recently and one can guess that the market pressure from cac played a part. 

I agree!

Coinbuf

I think your results say far less about the grading at PCGS (which imo has been super loose over the past few years) and more about your ability to identify the attributes that do well at CAC. Your sample size is far too small and too specific (only you choose the coins) to be of any real statistical relevance.

You would need a much bigger sample and a group of coins that have a known grading timeframe selected by multiple people. And then compare that to a known sample from the same group of people from a different time of grading to be able to draw any conclusions about the grading at PCGS.

SilenceOfTheClams

Coinbuf said:

I think your results say far less about the grading at PCGS (which imo has been super loose over the past few years) and more about your ability to identify the attributes that do well at CAC. Your sample size is far too small and too specific (only you choose the coins) to be of any real statistical relevance.

You would need a much bigger sample and a group of coins that have a known grading timeframe selected by multiple people. And then compare that to a known sample from the same group of people from a different time of grading to be able to draw any conclusions about the grading at PCGS.

18 of the 28 coins were fresh back from grading at PCGS having been submitted raw. The coins were simply those accumulated over a few years that needed grading. I didn’t evaluate them once back, I just sent them to CAC along with other coins that I had purchased already graded and had evaluated for quality relative to grade. So on those 18, I had no influence. Just clarifying.

SurfinxHI

Seems to me that your grading results indicate that PCGS graded accurately. And CAC agreed with the grades as being A or B for the grade. What is to be gleaned? CAC and PCGS agree on the grades in the sub most of the time, at the high end of the grade level. Why make it any more complicated than that?

Coinbuf

SilenceOfTheClams said:

Coinbuf said:

I think your results say far less about the grading at PCGS (which imo has been super loose over the past few years) and more about your ability to identify the attributes that do well at CAC. Your sample size is far too small and too specific (only you choose the coins) to be of any real statistical relevance.

You would need a much bigger sample and a group of coins that have a known grading timeframe selected by multiple people. And then compare that to a known sample from the same group of people from a different time of grading to be able to draw any conclusions about the grading at PCGS.

18 of the 28 coins were fresh back from grading at PCGS having been submitted raw. The coins were simply those accumulated over a few years that needed grading. I didn’t evaluate them once back, I just sent them to CAC along with other coins that I had purchased already graded and had evaluated for quality relative to grade. So on those 18, I had no influence. Just clarifying.

But you had evaluated them prior to sending for grading, the point I'm making is that you selected all the coins regardless of when. So again, this suggests very little about the current tight or loose grading at PCGS, but rather it speaks to your ability to choose nice for the grade coins imo.

SilenceOfTheClams

Coinbuf said:

SilenceOfTheClams said:

Coinbuf said:

I think your results say far less about the grading at PCGS (which imo has been super loose over the past few years) and more about your ability to identify the attributes that do well at CAC. Your sample size is far too small and too specific (only you choose the coins) to be of any real statistical relevance.

You would need a much bigger sample and a group of coins that have a known grading timeframe selected by multiple people. And then compare that to a known sample from the same group of people from a different time of grading to be able to draw any conclusions about the grading at PCGS.

18 of the 28 coins were fresh back from grading at PCGS having been submitted raw. The coins were simply those accumulated over a few years that needed grading. I didn’t evaluate them once back, I just sent them to CAC along with other coins that I had purchased already graded and had evaluated for quality relative to grade. So on those 18, I had no influence. Just clarifying.

But you had evaluated them prior to sending for grading, the point I'm making is that you selected all the coins regardless of when. So again, this suggests very little about the current tight or loose grading at PCGS, but rather it speaks to your ability to choose nice for the grade coins imo.

That is not a correct assessment. First, I didn’t assess these coins at all as strong for the grade as they were raw. If I had determined that a coin was a 63 or a 67, it mattered not if PCGS sent it back as a 65. I sent in what they sent back. There was no influence by me. On those coins it was a straight up comparison of PCGS grading compared to CACs because I sent in the returned coins without seeing if I felt the grades were tight or loose, I just sent in the group. The other 10 I submitted were purchased already graded so I did think they were good for the grade, so that sub group was influenced.

I think what I am trying to get at is that I think many people might have assumed that sending in every coin from a pcgs submission would result in a larger percentage not passing. So it seems to me that grading is an organic process in that I’d ebbs and flows. If so, are there date ranges when the majority of pcgs graded coins would pass if submitted, and other times when the majority would not? And I am not talking gradeflation. I am talking within shorter periods of time.

But you are right that it is a small sample size and there may be nothing to conclude. Just curious what folks thought.