This May Pay For My Detector!!!

[Ocean7]

went out Sunday and hunted for 4.5 hours and dug nothing but trash. Then about 1 hr before dark, I got a 03-26 signal at 5" in the dirt. Dug down and out popped this 1809 Liberty cap dime!!!!

1st one I ever dug and it looks like XF-40 which is about $925.00. It could have been About Uncirc when lost. AU-50 is $2500.00 Not done cleaning but certainly worth all the junk that I did dig!?

 

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[Darren in NC]

Literally nothing? So if they told you nothing, they have to refund your money. You can't pay for "nothing." Was there any explanation whatsoever?

 

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[Ocean7]

"they are unable to positively determine the authenticity or attribution of this item due to excessive wear, corrosion, damage and/or other factors."

and that's it!

 

[Darren in NC]

Coinshooter forewarned us on PCGS. But it sounds like all of the grading agencies are a rip-off

 

[Ocean7]

yep! don't even waste your money with these guys esp. if the coin has any problems. At least PCGS and Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) plainly state on their website that they do NOT grade problem coins.

This is just the opposite of what ANACS claims! So NONE of these 3 will grade
this type of coin. Very misleading and very under-handed in my book!

 

[True_Metal]

Sorry to hear that Ocean7. That would piss me off to no end, and i agree that it sounds like a big load of horsesh*t. Any thoughts on your next move?

 

[Ocean7]

well first I"m going to call them Monday and tell them what I think of their service. If they give me no satisfaction - then i will take other recourse and
tell everyone who will listen in this hobby NOT to use these people and why.
Save them their hard earned money from what can only be seen as questionable
biz practices.

If the coin has any problems - don't send in to these people. They'll only take your money and send you a form letter. Money for nothing....

 

[Ocean7]

Well I called ANACS and discussed the response I got from them. A very nice lady listened to me and said that she would look for further info from grader. Her research showed that the coin weighs proper weight but the grader ?thought? coin might have been in a fire. I said well it was dug and may have been in the ground for 200 years.

Told her I was dissatisfied and wanted a refund. She said that they normally didn?t refund money for these cases. I said well you know I post on 3 forums that 1000?s of people read and I intend to tell them not to use your service. Then she said that she would discuss with her manager and call me back.

Well her manager called me back and said after looking at my request ? he would refund my money less the shipping/insurance. I said fine. So I?m getting my money back for this! So I give credit to ANACS for this refund.

On the 3 forums I posted this coin, there have been 2393 views as of today. The power of Forum?s ? gotta love it!

And that?s the rest of the story!

 

[True_Metal]

Good job Ocean7! Fixed their red wagon didnt ya. As soon as she heard about the bad press on the forums that seemed to get her ass in gear.

 

[nedigger]

Just goes to show there is strength in numbers. I'm glad things worked out. HH.

 

[coinshooter]

Yep. I joined PCGS just to get some coins graded. They give you 8 "free" submissions for I believe it is about $180 or so. Out of those 8, 6 came back as "cleaned" with no $ returned. This scam should be reported to the better business bureau or a consumer fraud division. For what they call "an opinion" they can say they tried to grade your coin and gave you their professional "opinion". SO, they can basically use their "opinion" to justify stealing all of your money without grading or encapsulating your coin. I still think that you should pay for this "opinion", but not full price as you would for full encapsulation. This should be half service = half charged.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Here's my emails to PCGS: Let them know what you think!! Perhaps we can get their thinking re-arranged.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 11:19 AM
To: Customer Support
Subject: Submissions


I recently submitted 6 coins for grading. Of the six I submitted, 4 came back as "cleaned". Some of these I would defer to the experts, but one coin in particular (a 1932-S Washington Quarter) I have had in my collection for over 35 years. After looking at it intensly with a very fine loop, I am convinced it has never been cleaned. The mint mark is slightly dented, but it can still be determined to be an "s". Do you sometimes just put "cleaned" on something you don't believe is worth grading? I am distressed that you can charge $30 x 4 to send back more than half my coins, and walk away with the extra cash! I have heard that you would argue that this is for the time it takes to determine that the coin is "ungradeable", but then does that mean that you are giving the encapsulation capsule, and the time it takes to label and put this all into the capsule for free? Certainly not. I feel that if you are going to reject coins, the fee charged should be half of what it is presently, since you are actually doing half the work. I cannot afford to be sending coins to PCGS when half of them come back "cleaned". Of my first 8 "free" submissions, I think six of them came back rejected. In this case, I did not know that you would charge for rejections, or I would have been more careful. In the case of these last coins, I did not beleive they had been cleaned and have no way of telling short of just looking for scratches on the coins which I did not see even with a powerful loop. You have made me afraid to get any coin graded at this point for fear that PCGS will once again just walk off with my $ and send me back a nice blue case with a plastic envelope in it for $30 per coin plus postage and ins. fees. Many coins are cleaned these days and this is such an arbitrary thing to say about any coin, that this must be your best moneymaker. I admit, that I am impressed with your standards, but at the same time, I have seen dealer coins that were obviously slabbed by PCGS that certainly had obvious cleaning yet were graded and encapsulated.

I am fearful to send any more of my coins to PCGS because it is such a "crapshoot", even on the ones that I would swear have never been cleaned. I am not new to numismatics, but will be sure to tell all others that I talk with about the "true" way PCGS works. To say I am disgusted is an understatement.

_____________________________________________________________________________________


From: Cassi East [mailto:CEast@collectors.com]On Behalf Of Customer Support
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 8:53 AM
To: ################
Subject: FW: Submissions


We don?t call coins cleaned arbitrarily. If we determine it has been cleaned, that?s what we call it. If it is ungradeable for a different reason, we state the correct reason. Just because a coin has been in one collection 35 years does not preclude it from being cleaned. Coins were cleaned in the late 1960s and early 1970s too. In fact, it was more prevelant then, because the dangers were not as widely known.

We don?t ?walk off? with people?s money. You are paying for an opinion, and that?s what you?re getting. We would actually prefer to put coins in our holder than not.

Mike Sherman

_______________________________________________________________________________________


Hi Mike,
Thanks for your reply. I do understand what you are saying, but many of these coins sold today have been dipped or otherwise cleaned in such a way that it is not blatantly obvious to the coin collecting consumer. My point being that, yes, PCGS is giving an "opinion" too. Your "opinion" might be more scientific than mine, but just the same you are charging full price for the privledge of that "opinion" and making extra money by not encapsulating the coin (plus the labor involved) too boot. Hence, you are getting double value for your "opinion" and the customer is getting just the "opinion" for the same price he pays for an encapsulated and graded coin. I'm sure PCGS will not lower a "money making" standard such as this. I just see it as "giving back" something to the consumer who supports your industry, not "biting the hand that feeds it". A half fee for non-encasulation would show "good will" towards your customers and possibly even bring in more customers when they found out that you were not out to gouge them. Admittedly, an "opinion" is valuable, but come on, let's be realistic and see the whole picture. Customers are what has made PCGS. Without them, you don't have a business. I have a choice as a consumer, I just believe it's not right what the grading industry is doing these days. It's just my opinion, but feel free to bring it up at the next board meeting. I'm just a little guy in the whole scheme of things and I'm sure dealers take priority over us, but I would be submitting more coins as a litlle guy if I felt like it was worth a chance they "might" get encapsulated and if they didn't I could count on half of the regular fee to pay for the priviledge of a professional opinion.
_______________________________________________________________________________________

I didn't even get a response back.

These people don't care, they are like a big auction site we all know of. Because they are the biggest, they don't give a flying leap what we submit.
Email them at www.PCGS.com and let them know your opinion!!!!

 

[nedigger]

It seems to me that even if a coin has been cleaned (or they determine that it has been) it could still be graded and encapsulated and clearly marked "cleaned". Does that make sense to anyone else? HH.

 

[coinshooter]

Yes, some companies do do it this way, which I beleive would be preferrable, but PCGS are purists. Those companies that do grade cleaned coins are not looked at in the industry as being on the same playing field with the top 3 biggies. Therefore, if you buy an encapsulated, cleaned coin in one of these slabs, you should get it for much less. That's why you should never clean a valuable coin (because the numismatic industry does not value them as highly). I can understand their reasoning, because sometimes you could increase a grade by cleaning a coin (if cleaning scratches didn't count). I just don't believe you should pay full price for half service. 8)

 

[Gribnitz]

Coinshooter, can I ask what the definition of "cleaned" is ? Do they consider getting the mud off with soap and water cleaned ? Or does "cleaned" refer to the more drastic lemon juice, jewelry cleaner type cleaned ?

 

[coinshooter]

Yes, cleaning can be getting the mud off, but I believe you could clean a coin extremely carefully by soaking it in water with dishwashing soap and not rubbing any mud off, but letting it eventually fall off and then pat dry on a clean cloth. But with these guys, good luck, they'd probably still say it was cleaned. I'm pretty sure they take a good look at the coin with a microscope to see if there are any duplicate parallel lines on the coin anywhere or any newer scratches. This would indicate to the graders that someone cleaned it? I have had coins that I swear were cleaned submitted and these came back graded and then ones that I swear could never have been cleaned (like my quarter in the above letter), that came back as cleaned, so I say it's a crapshoot as far as throwing your money away. The only point of having a coin slabbed in the first place is if you want a definitive value on it that nobody can dispute. However, if it's a rare enough coin, you can always find someone to buy it in the present condition and you won't have to pay $35 to have it slabbed. If you sell it "raw", then just take it to a few coin dealers and get them to give you an idea of what grade they would put on it (assuming you can't grade it yourself). Slabbing is a purist type thing for coin collectors anyway and chances are if your coin was dug from the ground, it better be pretty rare before you'd even consider getting it slabbed in the first place. Most people who collect coins would not even look twice at a slabbed coin that was a "dug" coin unless it was a 1916-d Merc or some other more rare coin. 8)

 

[bakergeol]

Ocean 7
Do not give up on your quest to have this coin valued properly.? I personally have dug early silvers which had the same type of black high relief discoloration yours had and these were authentic Look at the coin in the thread " OK screwdriver king" on October 26 on the metal detecting forum on the depot. Discoloration looks like yours doesn't it.

George

 

[Darren in NC]

I've been detecting for a decade now, and the idea of "not rubbing" your coin to identify it (when you pull it out of the ground) is still a mystery to me. Now it's even moreso. If the snooty folks don't want my coin that's been dug, what's the point of me being careful to begin with? I know there's a lottery's chance I may find a rare coin, and I wouldn't want it to get damaged. But I guess I'm the risktaking type who would rather see the 10,000 coins I've dug than wonder if I have found the "one." I keep all the coins I find anyway. :P

 

[coinshooter]

Yeah, keep on rubbing them (unless you live near Massachusetts, PA, NY or Maine), they tend to find the old stuff. You have my permission tolick them clean if you want too. 8)