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Submitting Coins
I have been collecting coins and some paper money for over 30 years. But I became a CAC member two years ago. This is either for CAC to answer or for the other members of this new forum. How do you choose what coins to send to be evaluated? I have sent three different submissions with nine to tweleve coins in each. Only to have all or most of them not accepted.
So, I'm trying to not to waste their time or mine by getting everything all packaged up and sent. Do we submit, by grade, by rarity or by year and mint mark? The one that really confused me was my 1855-S three dollar gold piece. Only about 6000 were minted, so I sent it and it was rejected, (not accepted)
I'm just trying to get an idea of what I shoud be sending. Thanks for your time and good luck to all of us using this new forum.
Comments
Ideally, you wouldn’t submit the coins based upon any of those considerations.That’s because they don’t have anything to do with whether the coins are solid for their assigned grades. My opinion is that you should try to find someone knowledgeable about grading, who can screen your coins, in order to determine whether they merit submission to CAC.
There are lots of ideas and theories on this, only at X price point or only at X grade level and so on. Really it just depends on what your goals are, but my view is that I will send any coin in if I feel the coin has at least a reasonable chance to be accepted. If the coin is a rare date coin then I may send it even if I feel the chance is slightly less than reasonable. I really do not care about the value or rarity, if I think it will bean I will likely send it in. As an example years ago (before I had direct submission ability) Mark Feld submitted some coins for me one of those was an MS61 common date Morgan dollar which received a gold bean. Now many dealers and collectors would not have bothered given that the coin was only worth $40-$50 at that time; but the value of the coin was not what drove my decision to submit the way it might for others.
I would second Mark's thought that if possible you should seek the opinion of a knowledgeable dealer (or fellow local collector) to help you pre screen your coins prior to submitting. It is very easy for us as the caretakers to have a biased view of the coins in our collections and an outside opinion may be very helpful to you.
Just send everything in. You can't learn without doing it this way. And when you get everything back, compare. My first submission went real well. I think 60%. That's the last one like that. I send in 20 each time. I think it was 14 on that submission. Then I sent in 20 ms67 ikes and only 3 got the bean. Now I have 20 that didn't pass and 9 that did. Now I can look at those coins and see why the bean coins got it and why the non bean coins didn't. If I had only sent in 1 and it failed, I wouldn't have ever learned.
Ultimately there are other factors that I think come into play. Strike quality can affect the grade. Poor strikes don't usually get a bean.
@VERTIGO , while others will disagree with your suggestion, I like it, especially for those of us that are Collector members, since we get refunded or a credit for the fees we pay for coins that don’t pass!
By the way, GREAT looking Ikes! Yikes!
Steve
I live in a very rural area. I don't have any kind of Facebook or anything like social media. I only have one dealer friend i know who has been a cac member for several years. And he is just an online friend. I don't have a lot of people I can ask and get advice from about things. So I just started sending in initially. As a collector I only paid for the passes. Most of the ike failures were bought on stock photo auctions. This was also the only series I owned a lot of the same grade. So I wanted to see what the difference was. Now I know what I'm looking for and at. By doing this I really taught myself. And having this many you can compare them side by side.
The other series I'm fond of, is the capped bust half dollars. These are also tough to get passes on. Especially the early ones. And those are the ones I like the best. Specifically the 1807, 1808 design. But anything before 1820 is nice. And a lot of these are tough to pass because they have poor strikes.
My guess is that in many cases, it’s not the strike that’s preventing the coins from stickering. My experience has been that (rightly or wrongly) many collectors put considerably more emphasis on strike than third party professional graders do.
Unfortunately several of the collectors who used this method were so disappointed with their results that they gave up after only one submission and decide to not submit any more coins. Getting an approval rate around 10% is very disappointing, why not try to find someone with above average grading skills and or CAC experience, who can screen your coins.
I've watched the positive results of those that have adopted this method, they're very happy they continued submitting, and believe they have improved their grading skills. Personally I've found that if a coin is problem free with natural surfaces it will be approved. If I'm on the fence, but think its got a chance, usually it will not be approved.
Don't hesitate to reach out and ask for a little help with your first few submissions. Of course if you're a proficient grader then you will probably do well on your own.
Unfortunately the reality is that too many collectors are unwilling or unable to learn to grade. I say this because they have told me so, despite my assurance that everyone can learn to grade to some extent. In addition, I've met a few collectors that are not open to other opinions, they feel that their grading is correct, regardless of what others say.
You know the old saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.
Plus, the whole process is highly enjoyable for the gambler in you. Think of a CAC submission as a $15 (or modestly higher) lottery ticket.
We are playing the CAC lottery right now. We will not need to wait long, as CAC's current turnaround time is merely five business days, a far cry from PCGS's five months for some submissions.
We submit pricier coins through expert dealers because we are convinced that unintentional, subconscious bias may be involved.
For the impatient type, you can determine the results days before they become official by running the slab serial numbers though CAC's verification system.
On what other risk can you spend $1,000 that will bring so much (almost guaranteed) excitement?
@CACfan - Great comments and insights. What you say makes sense.
Maybe a YN can teach me!!!
I also endorse the learning from the mistakes.