Story: A pcgs set registry software bug and the all time greatest set of Roosevelt Dimes — Welcome to the CAC Educational Forum

Story: A pcgs set registry software bug and the all time greatest set of Roosevelt Dimes

Have you ever wondered what's in some of the pcgs registry sets that are closed for viewing? High Desert for example? Well, for about a week in around 2017... I was able to see them all.

The pcgs member that goes by onlyroosies discovered he could view a closed Roosevelt dime set named "jnf". He had some fairly convoluted way to see the set and I simplified it to just getting the set id off the revision history link and then manually creating the url to view a set with the copied set id. (So maybe it was just an incomplete or lazy way of coding the software to hide closed sets, rather than a true "bug"). We can't know for sure how long this security hole had been there but likely since the registry was created! Also I think they used to not have links to the revision history, so for many years it may have been harder to know a closed sets id, but with most being 4 digit numbers some kind of automated script could have easily figured them out. We did of course alert pcgs of the problem and about a week later the security hole was fixed.

So how did this bug impact the history of Roosevelt Dime Collecting? Well, onlyroosies had sold his silver dimes to Hansen but Hansen passed on the clad dimes. Onlyroosies was actually trying to sell me the clad dimes but I don't have the budget for a whole set like that and would have only wanted about 15 of the coins anyway. But after we could see the "jnf" set, and although it was not a super high rank or gpa overall, we did notice he or she had two pop 1/0s and hence was probably pretty serious about collecting dimes. Onlyroosies thought he or she might be interested in his clad dimes, but there was no contact owner envelope next to his or her set or sets.

But aha! I remembered buying some clad quarters a few years before from someone on ebay who's real name initials fit the J and F, and it makes sense someone into clad quarters might be into clad dimes. Back then you could also get their real email address from past paypal history, so I contacted him and asked if that was him and it was! Well fast-forward a few years not only did jnf buy onlyroosies clad dimes, but they're now good friends. With the help of onlyroosies and others, jnf went on to complete silvers and clads ranked even much higher than Hansen. Now called the Halcyon Collection, he even was able to acquire one of the only 2 known 1975 no S proof dimes (a coin worth around $500K). Holy cow! His set should be in the pcgs HOF easily but so far it seems like Roosevelt Dimes are looked down upon by the "experts" at pcgs.

Had pcgs coded proper security for their closed registry sets, who knows how different history would have been!

Comments

  • I wish this forum software had a like button for posts. This is a darn cool story. I'm into Mercs but have ventured into Roosevelts a bit as a side project/distraction when the Mercs I want just aren't available.
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