It is interesting to see so much written in these guides about the relative worth of certain grading houses. Last February my father passed away and I agreed to liquidate his coin collection on behalf of my mother. My first order of business was to catalog the collection and determine which coins would merit the expense of grading. At this point, I paid for a PCGS subscription and read as much as possible. I gave every coin a an estimated high grade and an estimated low grade. Then, I began to send them in for grading. It was interesting to look at the grading gepany's population reports as this provides an indication of the sweet spots in the market for certain coins. If you believe that you have an MS66 quality coin and only a handful of coins have ever been graded at that level by a particular grading gepany, chances are your coin will not be graded at that level. That being said, I decided to initially use PCGS. They clearly have a reputation for conservatism and quality. The coins graded uniformly at the low end of my window and several of the coins were returned with issues. At that point, I decided to send some of the coins to ANACs as they will provide a grade for problem coins and note the problem on the slab. Many of these coins have significant worth in spite of their problems and are worth grading if you are going to list them for sale. I decided to submit some of the PCGS coins to ANACs for crossover grading to see whether the grading was geparable. For the coins that I submitted, I found that the grades came back identical. As such, my strategy for coin grading is as follows:
I use ANACs as my primary grading house. They are reputable and will grade all coins (other thanfakes - I did find we had a roll offake steel1943 pennies WEIRD). Any coin that gees back valued at $500 or above, I consider for PCGS cross over grading. PCGS does carry a bit of a premium on okay, so it is advantageous to cross over provided the value of the coin is high, the population report is favorable, and the coin does not have any problems.
I have had the misfortune to purchase coins graded by ANI and these coins appear to be extremely over graded. I received a lot of coins with grades so high that the PCGS population reports indicated that they had never graded a coin of that quality. In addition, the coins had clear flaws such as scratches and nicks. As such, I will no longer purchase coins graded by ANI; there is no basis for understanding the value of the coin. I was tempted to take some of these coins and send them in for cross over grading; however, I decided to return the coins to the seller instead. As such, I would also advise caution in dealing with the "grab bag sellers". My experience is that they are not worth the money. My new policy is to only buy coins when I know exactly what I am buying and have a basis for assessing a grade. I will buy individual coins that are ungraded, but then the risk is based upon my guess of grade rather than what the seller decides to ship me. In this case, I always send the coins to a grading house before I put them into my collection or consider them for resale.Hopefully, this information is helpful to you as a buyer, seller or collector on okay
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